12.17.2008

The traditions of the season are best enjoyed in the warm embrace of kith and kin. Thith tree is a thymbol of the thpirit of the Griswold Chrithmath.

Mele Kalikimaka blogworld!

I love christmas time. music, decorations, lights, and most importantly my Clark Griswold quotes are suddenly in context.

It's been a crazy year for me with a new job, moving, traveling and all of the other fun stuff that happens in a year. I haven't spent as much time blogging this year (which is either really good or really bad) but that's something i hope to single handedly change that right now.

travel.
looking back on the past few months on my life as a bedouin i'm really glad that i had this chance to venture around. there were definitely some slow days, and days where i wasn't sure where i was going to sleep that night, but all in all my travel time was a huge blessing. my list of places that i went is pretty sweet to look at:

san diego
murrieta
long beach
los angeles
ventura
fresno
bakersfield
colorado
houston
dallas
okc
vegas
boston

friends.
an even more meaningful list is that of my friends and people i call family that have showed an amazing amount of love. i am truly blessed. i may have lost my job, but i feel like i have regained my spirit. a lot of that is God putting me into the presence of some mighty warriors that i am fortunate enough to call friends and family.

thanks.
this thanksgiving we went to boston to be with mi hermana who started her first hotshot job recently. what a fun trip. for thanksgiving day we went to plymouth rock and had a picnic, which i loved.the little adventures that we stumble into are awesome and it cracks me up to see our family picture in front of the mayflower.
family pic 2
the only thing i would have changed about that day is that we should have dressed up as pilgrims. to top the day off, we decided to do our own 'senior pictures' in the park at plymouth rock.
PB270042
sarah sr pic
my sr pic

what can i say, we are a goofy family. but we do have fun.

the lion's den.
i capped off the trip to boston with lunch inside the green monster and a celtics game. seeing fenway was cool, but the tour there is lame. sitting for 45 minutes watching a video and five minutes of pictures does not make for a tour, it's a lecture. at the very least we did get some good pics.
PB280076
PB280074

as for the celtics game, that was an adventure in it's own right. tickets were sold out so we went the scalper route which was funny, because i think it was mi hermana's first exposure to that culture. after walking around for a few minutes my sister gave me the best quote of the trip, "I don't think we're going to get tickets cause everyone else here is looking too." In between laughs i explained to my sister that no scalper was going to stand on the corner yelling they had tickets, since this isn't exactly a practice condoned by the nba. anyways, we had a great time at the game. Celtics fans are nuts, and they are definitely die hards. Who wouldn't be when you buy a great championship team? The two best parts of the game were the crowd yells at the Disco dancer in the Gino shirt (had to be there)

and whenever Brian Scalabrine gets the basketball. Needless to say we had a blast.

parting words.
We also toured around downtown Boston, which was fun but cold. Mi hermana works by boston commons and all of the historical parts of the city which is pretty cool. My only complaint about Boston is the lack of street signs. Someone needs to donate a couple grand and buy some street signs. Oh yeah, and the frat hats need to go.
6a00d8341cb89153ef00e551cda3a78834-800wi
If you're going to be a diehard fan, buy a decent cap.

best moment in boston:
dropkick murphy's coming on the radio as we're driving up bunker hill. even mi madre was rocking out.

christmas fun facts:
so i've been looking up how different christmas traditions got started and it's been really interesting.

decorating trees comes from martin luther. legend goes he was walking in the woods and saw the stars shining through the trees. he brought a tree home and decorated it with candles (is that really a good idea?) so he could describe to his kids what he saw.

the song 12 days of christmas comes from england when it was illegal to be catholic. parents sang in code to their children about the gifts that God (my true love) gives us.
a partridge is a bird that will draw predators away from the nest by sacrificing itself.
two turtle doves are the two testaments of the bible.
three french hens are faith, hope and charity
four calling birds are the gospels
five golden rings are the first five books of the old testament
six geese laying represent creation
seven swans are for the seven gifts of the spirit in 1 cor 12
the eight maids are the beatitudes
the nine ladies dancing represent the nine types of angels (according to catholic theology)
ten lords leaping are the ten commandments
eleven pipers represent the faithful apostles
and the twelve drummers represent the apostle's creed (once again going towards catholicism)

santa comes from several european traditions in folklore, but was popularized by chrs billings in the late 1990's.

time to get ready for making ornaments with the kiddos tonight.

one love, one heart,
d.j.

1 comment:

OK Chick said...

I LOVE Boston. I think your Thanksgiving sounds like a great trip. I'm jealous of your picnic on Plymouth Rock, it sounds really fun. I mean, you were like the Pilgrims. I hope you ate corn because the Pilgrims ate corn!

Look forward to more post.