7 Quick Takes Friday (#13)

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Well, I haven't updated in a few weeks (I know, you're really upset by this...) because I've been at home on winter break! I am back in DC now, so my Quick Takes this week focus on my homes!

1. It was good to be home again, and it's good to be back in DC! I enjoyed seeing friends and family and now I'm enjoying catching up with friends now that I'm back. For some mixing of Ohio and DC, I had a few friends over last night to watch Miami kick some Tennessee rear end in the GoDaddy.com Bowl Game! Great to see the boys go from a double digit losing record last year to a double digit winning record this year! This pre-game speech was epic.
2. My family enjoys playing board games, and we played almost every night when I was home. I have officially declared myself the Scrabble champ of the household with a winning record of a billion wins to one loss. Alright, a billion is extreme, but believe me when I say we played A LOT of Scrabble.
3. My next youngest sister turned 21 over the break and so my parents and I took her for her first wine tasting to Wyandotte Winery, a local winery near where I grew up! It was a lot of fun, and I walked away with some delicious wines to bring back with me!
4. CHRISTMAS! That is the whole reason for the season, right? I played flute with the choir at Christmas Eve Mass, which is always fun. We celebrated Christmas at home and then also celebrated with my dad's extended family on the 25th and my mom's extended family on the 1st. Great times with all the family! I can say that I got everything I've ever wanted for Christmas... except for a monkey carrying a backpack with a million dollars. Maybe next year.
5. I spent New Year's Eve with my friend Claire and her hubby. I rang 2010 in with them and another friend that was in their wedding with me, and so it was like a reunion one year later! It was a fun night. I also spent a few days with her crafting and playing board games! She got this game for her husband called Carcassonne, and it is so much fun. Really. She is also a master crafter and I hope to make millions of dollars someday so I can finance a craft store for her to run.
6. Since I've moved out of the house with all of my bedroom furniture, I no longer have a room or bed to call my own when I travel home. This means I usually end up playing "musical beds". I often sleep on the spare twin in my youngest sister's room... which is also the bed/mattress I slept on when I was 3... so sometimes I switch it up and sleep in whatever bed happens to be open... even if it means waking up at 7 AM when the kids have gone to school to take over their bed. Needless to say, I am glad to be back to my own bed.
7. I don't really attend daily Mass when I'm home... I'm not sure I could tell you why. I think it's mostly to do with it's much earlier in the morning and therefore much less convenient than our wonderful noon Mass at the Newman Center. I miss going to Mass every day so much, though! It really has opened my eyes though to the need to start getting myself there even when it's not convenient... especially since I won't be in grad school on this campus forever (I should probably do a post about that...). So it's good to be back, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things so I went to Mass today and stuck around for Adoration before grabbing lunch with a couple of friends.

Happy New Year!