An all Octopus Holiday

Anyone who knows me well knows I love octopus.🐙 I don't really know why. Maybe because many scientists have said they are so unique they are the closest we have to an alien living on earth. Maybe because they are the darling of the Steampunk world. Or maybe because they are flat out brilliant!  Probably the most intelligent creature on earth. They have beaten dolphins and Chimps in tests yet all scientists will say is they are the most intelligent invertebrate. Well big fat hairy deal! That's hardly a compliment.   I don't know why people won't rate them higher but lets face it chimps and dolphins are cute.  Although the later smiles entirely too much.  If I ran into a human who smiled that much I would run screaming in the other direction!  People have been hinting at their intelligence with  commercials like the battery one showing an octopus taking a picture of a scuba diver with the 8 cameras it had stolen.  Or the recent Geico one showing an octopus trapped in the back seat of a car calmly unlocking the door and letting himself out.  Yet they're the smartest invertebrate, only?  Doesn't seem fair.

So when it comes to gift giving everyone knows they are safe with an octopus. This birthday I received three, a big one for my garden from dad, a blue glass paperweight one from my brother Tommy and a very realistic octopus bottle holder from Tara.

It used to be difficult to find octopus anything. Now they are everywhere. I have octopus kitchen towels, statues, jewelry and at least 10 ornaments on my tree. So I must not be the only fan out there.

In addition to my blue octopus I also received a sewing machine and gift card to Joanne's fabrics from Tommy and Ruth!  They also took us all out to eat!  It was very much appreciated but they already had me at Octopus.

It Takes a Village to assemble my village

We all had a case of boredom last week so the three of us decided to put up the Christmas decorations. I was tired of looking at Harvest stuff anyway and it was just a few days early. Traditionally I put everything up right after Thanksgiving.

Fixing the lighthouse

I sure was glad to have an extra set of hands this year. Usually I end up doing it mostly myself.  Dad helped put up my little village and he was on glue detail. I must have been in a rush last year to put things away as several pieces needed repairs.  It looks much bigger in person than in the picture and takes a while to get everything hooked up and synchronized. 

My favorite pieces are the tugboat and the Time's Square building which only had numbers for the first few years of the 2000 decade. So I have been making some extra pieces for missing numbers. No one has noticed-I think.  

Then we tackled the tree.  Jim assembled it then let me and dad do the fun stuff.  Although apparently I'm not very good at it as nearly every ornament I put up dad moved saying I put it in the wrong spot. Ah, okay.  No wonder the tree looked so different every year I was growing up!

The last thing is always the outside lights.  I don't do ladders so everything is low and I have my star shower going with gingerbread men and other Christmas items. I don't know how the people get these to cover the entire house!  They must have 6 of them!  One just shows on a little section of one of the domes. Hmmm😕 But it still looks okay.  

Also last week was my birthday. I spent one afternoon with my sister Bert and she made us a nice lunch.  And it was nice talking girl stuff instead of hockey football and fishing!😩 Then Jim took me to a French restaurant that was in an old restored church.  I had my favorite-escargot! Yum!🙌 And filet mignon which was awesome. They tried to talk me into Creme Brulee but since I was taking half my dinner home that wasn't possible.  Next time!

At the French restaurant with my fun drink

And of course Thursday was Turkey Day.  I think it's a silly holiday and if we hadn't been invited over to my daughter's we probably wouldn't have done anything. But it was really nice and I'm glad we went.  Kevin had a huge spread OMG, it was like a buffet!  If my Greek mother in law had still been alive she would have told him in Greek he made enough food for 40 sheep herders.  It certainly was!  And everything was delicious.  

After dinner we played a fun card game with Kevin's mom Pat, and then watched Beauty and the Beast from Netflix which I still hadn't seen yet! It was pretty good, odd casting choices for some of the characters but still enjoyable. 

Uhhh, I ate too much Turkey

Yesterday my brother and sister in law took dad for the weekend. They do that frequently to give me and Jim a little break.  Dad said he feels like a child of divorced parents. The other parents taking him for every other weekend!  I added too that by saying when I dropped him off "he remembered his ball and glove so you can play catch with him and you don't have to pay child support this week!"😄

The pitter patter of little feet

 We had our little grandchild Ana visit this week and she is adorable and tiny!  She wore the littlest pair of Crocs I had ever seen. This was our first visit and we enjoyed it so much! We hope it was the first of many.  Our house is not child proof though and we found that out quickly.  We all had to watch her every minute as she was off and running and exploring.  One time I went in the kitchen to see her holding up two chemicals from the closet as if to ask me " which one did you want the bathroom cleaner with lye or the Windex?". AHHH😲 I then tied that closet shut with a string. She is so fast it's amazing how she can move so quick with those little legs!

Grampa Jim playing with Ana

Fun with a fly swatter

Wearing the dome blue print shirt we had made for he

dad Steve assembling her toy

Eyeing our gift to her

And she added her tiny hand on the tribe wall. She really LOVED painting on the wall, aw oh may have created an issue for other homes, but it was fine with us.

Teeny fingers and mom's undeneath

Me, momma Michelle an Ana

Sunset at Jenkins creek

One of our stops was a visit to Jenkins Creek.  Since there had just been an accident there(-a tracker trailer who's driver was driving too fast and erratically and ended up rig and all in the creek) I wanted to see if the creek was okay and it did look murky and none of us saw any otters or manatees but hopefully that was just a fluke and all is well.  Not sure how much Ana liked Jenkins Creek but she sure did love running through the parking lot much to the amusement of everyone watching.

 Speaking of the pitter patter of some other little feet:  I started to take my Christmas decorations out of the shed and scared the bejesus out of some nesting flying squirrels! Sorry fellas!  Till next time...