Shane and I had a busy weekend or at least I would call it so. It started on Saturday with us having his family’s Christmas gathering at his mother’s. The party was to start at 1 pm and we arrived about 12:30. Since Karen wasn’t planning to serve any sort of meal at the gathering, we stopped on our way to eat at Taco John’s. It had been a while since we had last eatten there, so it was a nice change.
Earlier in the week Karen had learned that Scott and Charity wouldn’t be arriving until around 5 because Charity worked until 4. The time of the party couldn’t be pushed back until then because others had plans for the evening, Shane and I included. While the party was suppose to start at 1 pm, it was more like 1:45 before we started. The reason for the late start was that Steve, Angie, Cheyanne, and Cody were running late.
Karen believes in having each child sit in front of the tree to open one at a time, while she video tapes it, and order is either youngest to oldest or oldest to youngest. This year it was oldest to youngest. This year she had trouble with her video camera not recording properly. So she’s going to get a copy from Angie who was also taping it this time.
The only thing to note about the gift opening was that Shane played Santa by wearing a Christmas hat/ball cap, and handing out the presents to the kids. Well he wore the hat until he became too hot that is. Otherwise the children’s gift opening went as expected.
After the children’s gift opening we had the adult gift opening. I received a hand painted picture of unicorns on with a purple sky from Katie, (Shay’s gf) which I really love. It’s quite beautiful, and when we get a digital camera I’ll have to take a picture of it. Shane received a popcorn popper from his sister which is exactly what he wanted. Shane had Shay’s name and we had purchased a leather jacket for him. But Shane had decided that he wanted to try and play a joke on his brother. So it was boxed up in a 3 ream box for paper, with a ream of paper on top. Unfortunately Shay didn’t fall for it. I had Scott’s name, and we purchased jeans for him as he requested.
Shay and Katie were the first to leave, and then after a bit names were drawn for next year. Shane has Angie, and I have Shawnadee. A bit later Steve, Angie, Cheyanne, and Cody left. Around 4:00 – 4:30 Shane and I left, which was before Steve and Angie arrived but we had plans for the evening.
We headed to West Salem, for Neil’s operating session. Since we arrived early we ended up stopping at Furiture Deals and Steals. There we found two matching floor lamps that we liked. Since we needed a set for the living room we decided to pick them up. And we like how they look in the living room, and how they balance the light out so much better than the one floor lamp I had before.
Neil’s operating session went well, and we had a lot of fun. I ran through trains, and during the second half Shane dispatched. It really was a lot of fun as always.
On Sunday, I needed to do the bookwork for our local SCA shire. It would have gone much quicker if I had been able to find the forms I needed for printing checks, but I found one which worked in a pinch. I needed to get that done though before we went to the meeting at 3.
After that was done, it was time to go to Bill & Kathy’s, for Teddy’s party. The party wasn’t suppose to start until 2:30 but since we had to be someplace else at 3 we stopped in early for a bit. One thing I did learn is that I really haven’t spend enough time with my nephews. They are a bit shy around me so I’ll probably have to work on that in the future.
Once we left, we had to get something for the potluck for our SCA meeting. We ended up getting crackers to go with the meat and cheese platter we purchased. The meeting went well. On the suggestions of Chelsey we are going to be changing the format of the meetings and such a bit. Instead of having social hour and then meeting, we are going to flip that. Chelsey had been asking about how to up our membership with some other chatelaines and was suggested that we do things more frequently in garb and in public. So the idea is that we have the business meeting first, and then social time in garb and preferably with a theme (at least to begin with).
Our next meeting is going to be at Wedgewood Commons (not exactly public access friendly but we’ll use it as a practice run). The following meeting will be at LaCrosse Public Library so it will be more public access.
After the meeting we had more social time and enjoyed the potluck. I talked with a few about my ideas for new garb for me. Ariella pulled out some of her recent reference purchases and I enjoyed looking through the books. She also has a persona which is approximately the same time and locale as mine.
Once we left we did the rest of our Christmas shopping. It wasn’t that we had a lot of Christmas shopping left. We actually only had some of my side of the family left, mainly my nephews. We had planned on stopping at Farm & Fleet first, but they were closed by the time we got there, a little after 6 I believe. It’s the Christmas shopping season I had expected them to be open later than that! We knew what we wanted to purchase for Chris so we went on to the next store, and picked up what we wanted for Chris and then found presents for Teddy and Max.
We did have to call Kathy to find out if the boys already had what we found but they didn’t. While we were on the phone I found out how Teddy had liked his birthday gift, and I found out he was playing with it at the time. So apparently it had made a big hit with him. It was a metal Tonka dump truck, not one of those plastic things you find all over the place now. While we couldn’t find sturdy metal trucks for them for Christmas, we still hope they like what they’re going to get.