Happy New Year! Welcome to the first edition of Coffee Break 2021–A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.
1. A second Christmas. Every year we travel to Kansas the day after Christmas to enjoy celebrating with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law (and sometimes some of their kids). My Mom makes the BEST Christmas feast of standing rib roast, gourmet cheese potatoes, and poppy seed salad. We feast, and we feast and we feast, feast, feast, feast. Afterward, we gather in their living room and my Dad reads the Christmas story (Luke 2:1-20) and my boys– who are bursting with impatient anticipation by this time– FINALLY get to open their gifts from Grandma and Papa and their Aunt and Uncle. This is a tradition we look forward to every year and even though our visit is often too short, we LOVE and appreciate it so much.
2. Last sledding of 2020. The day after we returned from Kansas, we got our first good dumping of snow–so of course we had to go play in it. Super Rockstar even got to join us this time.
3. Happy New Year! I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such an overwhelmingly unanimous consensus to see a year end. This was the first time the four of us got to celebrate ringing in a new year together–normally Super Rockstar is singing his heart out with SofaKillers somewhere. A group called the AdAmAn club has been ascending Pikes Peak to shoot off fireworks at midnight since 1922. This year they set them off at 9:00pm too. As a family, we did our countdown at 9, tooted horns, hollered Happy New Year (and Jumanji) and watched the fireworks. We were all sound asleep by 10:00pm. Ah! Bliss!
4. What I read. To complete my year of reading–I finished two more books. The first was a devotional book by Tony Dungy. It’s called The Uncommon Life Weekly Challenge. He is such an amazing individual–a mentor to so many, an incredible football coach and an insightful analyst. He wrote this devotional and used it as a tool for his players to encourage them not only as athletes, but in being better human beings. I really enjoyed it.
I also finished the last Agatha Christi I have–Murder on the Orient Express. It is another Hercule Poirot mystery and it is SO good. I also really loved the movie based on this book that came out a few years ago.
5. What we watched. Since we’re still on Christmas break–we watched a number of Christmas movies, but also many others thrown in. Christmas day was a fun surprise that HBO Max aired the new Wonder Woman 1984 for free. I enjoyed most of it–some of the story seemed kind of hard to believe and one of the characters is pretty cheesy. I won’t spoil the story–I really liked it and enjoyed it, my boys were so-so and Super Rockstar didn’t care for it at all. It’s PG-13–so there’s things that aren’t appropriate for littles like language, intense action and some adult situations. I think it’s fine for tween/teenage though.
While at Grandma and Papa’s house we watched Underdog. It’s on Amazon Prime and is a live action movie based on the cartoon from the mid 1960’s. We loved it because Underdog is a beagle–much like our Barney. It’s a really fun to watch movie and is appropriate for all ages.
We watched all three of The Santa Claus movies. I just love these so much–fun action, humor, and great stories. If you have littles that still believe in Santa–just know that the idea of Santa’s authenticity is questioned. The stories all prove he is real (along with Tooth Fairy, etc..), but if you don’t want it questioned–I would not recommend. Otherwise, they are clean and great fun.
On New Years Eve we watched War With Grandpa. This has Robert De Nero and is a nice lighthearted and funny movie. This is one of the few newer movies out there and you can rent it on Amazon Prime. I think it’s appropriate for older elementary age on. It’s rated PG, but the older daughter is kind of mouthy and has a boyfriend–nothing is shown, but it is insinuated that they have been kissing.
And lastly, we watched The Rundown. This has Dwayne Johnson, Sean William Scott, and Christopher Walken. It has GREAT action and so many funny moments too. It is one of my all time favorites and I loved getting to watch it with my boys. It’s rated PG-13 and is just fine for tween/teenage–the only big issue is that there is some bad language here and there. We all loved it.
6. My favorite memes of the week.
As always, I would love to hear from you. I hope you have a great week!