Winter Recess Faves!

It's been Winter Recess here all week and it's been wonderful to be home full time with Claire!  Although she had some homework and an English project to do over the break, she has enjoyed a lot of down time and fun stuff.  And I've had some time of organizing the home (closets, shelves, cupboards, basement) and have done the start of spring cleaning!  I've also had some lovely down time, finished 2 novels and a Bible Study book,  and have been able to find five faves from this past week even though I have way more than that!

To play along, link up over at Susanne's....it's a fun way to reflect back and find special things that God brought into your week!

MY FIVE FAVES!

• GIRL-TIME MOVIE NITE!  Dave was NOT interested in this movie.  I LOVED it when I was a teenager and since Claire is studying Russian, I thought she would enjoy this.  I borrowed it from my mom last summer but we saved it for this winter vacation week.  And oh.....Claire loved it every bit as much as I did!  There is NOTHING like this old love saga....other than Casablanca and Gone with the Wind, of course! :)  We watched it on Saturday and Sunday evening while Dave did other things...it was a special time for "us girls".

• SLEEPING! sleeping with my husband curled up with me, and savoring slower mornings ( but he had to work all week except for Monday, which was Presidents Day),in crisp,clean cotton sheets, coffee in bed, reading in bed.....  You can use your imagination to think of the rest.....:) but I just love sleeping curled up next to the love of my life and my best friend.

Claire with her younger cousin Emma

• CIRCUS CAFE!  Claire and I had to run an errand up to Saratoga (about a 25 min drive north from our home) on Wednesday.  My youngest sister (Jill) and I decided to meet at Circus Cafe for dessert (Claire and I had lunch there first) so we could bring my niece Emma her birthday gift.  She turns 9 in March and our month will be filled with rehearsals and the musical, so getting together would have been impossible!  Claire loves watching people open gifts so we celebrated Emma's day a little early.  It was great to see my sister, her husband and Emma's little sis, Mady, too!  I love getting my daughters together with their cousins...it's so important!  I am glad we are all friends as well as family!  And Circus Cafe is such a fun place to eat!!

• "TO DO" LIST COMPLETED!  ok, I know that's not very exciting but it makes my fave list because it feels so good to have accomplished the things on that list.  One of the things involved some mending and that is a chore I despise!!  But it feels so good to be done with that...and now it's like having a new sweater again! :) Another thing was organizing and purging my closet .....I got rid of one large trash bag of outdated clothes and "too small" shoes!  Getting chores done is always a fave.

• THIS BOOK!  I started and finished the above novel this week.  It blew me away. The author is from a very rural, economically-deprived town in upstate NY and that is where the main setting is (other than NYC for periods in the story).  I am not going to do a book review on this but I will tell you that it leaves an impact.  She writes about violence of girls/women by boys/men and our ignorance of so many things that actually go on.  She captures the mentality of small town life in an excellent manner and the book is a real page turner.  I was shocked at the ending.....sort of...but...that was the author's point I think.  It also deals with the abject poverty of rural, upstate NY and the dairy farm issues/environmental concerns regarding chemicals in farming vs. organic farming.  It drew me in because my childhood home was in a small town in Central NY and the surrounding areas were similar to those in the novel.  The only thing I didn't like about this book that does NOT make my fave list is that she used the "F" word a lot.  It seemed like almost all of her characters used that word and that was a turn off for me. If you can overlook that word, the story line is wonderful.  (due to mature content I don't recommend this for readers younger than 17).

What were some of your favorite things from the last week?  Were you or your children on Winter Recess this past week?