AuburnChick's Adventures

I don’t know about you, but I’m not quite ready to quit indulging in a bit of Christmas fun.

Thankfully, I haven’t had to thanks to the generosity of family, who gave me gift cards!

The first card I redeemed was for Amazon.

My wish list is long. As a reading teacher, I’m forever reading book reviews and adding titles to my list.

The first thing I added to my cart, though, was NOT a book but a DVD.

One of my favorite songs is Amazing Grace / My Chains are Gone by Chris Tomlin. Long before I heard him play this song live during a concert at a local beach, I fell in love with the video…

I wondered what movie clips were used in the video. Fortunately, so did other people, and someone answered the question in the video’s comments section.

Thus, the movie Amazing Grace was added to my wish list.

As a history buff, I am psyched, as the movie details the attempt by William Wilberforce, a Briton, to do something about England’s slave trade.

The movie got nearly all stars possible on Amazon, so it’s gotta be good, right?

I did manage to order a couple of books…Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, and Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry.

My friend, Barb, told me about Unwind after she found out one of my students was looking for a “different” sort of book. The book is about a time in the future when parents can choose to have their children unwound if they aren’t quite up to snuff…for any reason. The story details the saga of three young friends. One of them eventually becomes unwound. I can’t wait to read the book, but more importantly, I cannot wait to see what my student thinks of it. I will probably ask him to do some sort of extra activity that will showcase the book to the class.

The other book, Gathering Blue, sparked my interest after I read the book The Giver last summer. That book touched my heart and left me with many unanswered questions, just as the author intended. I was thrilled to discover that she continued the series, and I plan to purchase the next two books eventually.

With those three items bought, the gift card was officially spent.

I turned to my second gift card…an iTunes card.

I fully intend to save most of it for apps, but I couldn’t resist buying the following song. I love the musical arrangement and the way the singers phrase out the song. It’s just one of those songs that sticks with you.

Although I personally don’t give a lot of gift cards as presents, I will say that I sure do enjoy receiving and spending them!!!!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: christmas | 3 Comments »

Every Christmas, there’s always one…

One person who gets sick, that is.

With ten people in our family celebrating together each year, someone always gets sick.

Guess whose turn it was this year?

Yep.

You’ve got it.

That person was ME.

I started feeling icky on Saturday, while we were in Alabama visiting the Mr’s grandmother.

I started sniffing and sneezing.

I never sneeze unless I’m getting a cold.

I thought it was something in her house.

We traveled to the Mr’s parents’ house that evening, and I only began to feel worse.

I slept horribly that night, experienced extreme joint pain, and hovered between sleep and wakefulness all night.  Every time I woke to semi-consciousness, I spoke out the word “inference,” and visions of my students floated in front of my eyes.

No, I wasn’t delirious, but I was seriously not feeling well.

I had to suck it up though because I had to go visit my mom.

I took Airborne like crazy, along with Excedrin Migraine and Sudafed Cold and Sinus.

Yeah.  It was probably not the best thing to do, but I was trying to treat pain and cold symptoms.

I got through the day with a lot of Kleenex.

Christmas Eve, my joint pain was gone, but the cold I was suffering from was nasty.

Still, I participated in last minute shopping adventures.

I had to sit out the food preparation and cleanup though.  I didn’t want my germy hands to touch anyone else’s dishes or food.

That evening, I began to suffer another issue…extreme stomach ailments, which I will not describe except to say that the hours from 8pm to 12am were longgggg, and I read 3/4 of a book that a student had loaned me.  Oh, and my feet managed to go numb during various bouts of stomach ailment flareups.

I was miserable and in tears throughout the night because being sick is not something I do very well.

I gingerly got into bed that night and did manage to catch a few hours sleep.

Although the cold wasn’t gone, I woke up feeling a little better on Christmas morning and enjoyed a day of Christmas fun with my family.

We came home Christmas night, had our own Christmas opening party with the kids, and settled in for a long, storm-filled night with the puppies, who’d been well taken care of by a young man Chicky graduated high school with and is my go-to guy for dog sitting.

Today, we hit the road for Best Buy to do some exchanging.  Before we left, I took more medicine because I still wasn’t feeling well…stomach issues along with symptoms from the cold.

Unfortunately, all of the medicines did not hit my stomach well, and things were bad for a few minutes until everything passed through my stomach.

Lord have mercy!

He did, and I am back to only suffering from a runny nose and cough.

All in all, I had a great Christmas but am glad that my turn at being sick is over.

Not that I would wish for someone else to be sick, but since there’s always one, next year, it’s someone else’s turn!

Just sayin’!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: christmas | 2 Comments »

My, my, my, but time does seem to fly when you’re not having to make lesson plans and actually feel like your head is screwed on tightly!

I last blogged about my celebration with my mom.

Well, that afternoon, Coupon Queen admitted herself to the hospital.  She’d been having dizzy spells, and she thought her diverticulitis might be acting up.  So, off she went, and we started praying.

She didn’t go home that evening.  Grand Pooba returned to the house in the wee hours of the morning to retrieve her personal items because she’d been admitted into her own room.  We never heard a thing.

The next day, we took turns visiting her.  Chicky, Super Sis, and I ran to Walgreens, where everyone in Podunk, USA, was doing last-minute shopping, and picked up a set of lights, garland, and a musical animal.  We decorated her room and turned on the saxophone-wielding critter.

She smiled in delight, and the nurses chuckled softly when they entered at various times.

She got to go home later that afternoon, and we all did our thing, whatever that was (can hardly remember what exactly “that” entailed), and then we headed off to bed to await Santa.

I don’t know why, but I woke up at 3:19am and just could not go back to sleep.  My stomach wasn’t feeling great, and I was a little nervous that I’d caught my nephew’s bug, so I stayed in bed until 4 before finally giving up and arising.

I got myself all made up and then traveled downstairs, where I read for an hour before I started hearing people begin to stir upstairs.

It was finally time to find out what Santa had brought…

Chicky asked for that Bieber calendar, and yes, she’s almost twenty years old.  Go figure.

The kids seemed pleased with their gifts, and we waited for Super Sis’s family to arrive.

Coupon Queen had wrapped the presents with beautiful bows and ribbons, which made taking our time even more fun…

Tradition is that we take turns opening gifts, one at a time, beginning with the youngest person.  Everyone gets his or her time in the spotlight, and it’s a great way to thank each gift giver personally.

While one person opens, the rest of us wait…patiently…

Everyone seemed to really like their gifts.

I got a magenta colored purse, seven-cup food processor, and various other goodies.

Grand Pooba seemed to enjoy his BB gun, which Super Sis’s family got him to scare away adorable animals like this guy…

Yeah, yeah.  Don’t you dare post ugly comments.  First of all, I didn’t give that gift, and second of all, I yelled out to the squirrels, “Run, run for your lives!!”  I have witnesses.

After eating lunch, we headed over to Super Sis’s house to see what her family had gotten.  It was like walking into the aftermath of a tornado.  They’d opened gifts and run!

We visited for a while and headed back to the grandparents’ house for the evening.

I was doing a slow fade and headed to bed early.

It had been a wonderful Christmas!

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: christmas | Leave a comment »