September's Special Events!

 There were a couple of special events that happened in September, and I will now proceed to document them on my bloggety blog. 😆🤷

There was a big party for my Uncle Ronnie (my mom's oldest brother) and Aunt Audrey to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary! (That's a miracle in my family! 😄)

They look good! And I liked how their outfits coordinated.

Here they are with most of their grandkids and a couple of great-grandkids.

And with some of their kids (Ronnie's sons--my cousins--Richie and Ronnie II weren't there, and Roy passed away several years ago).

It was a fun evening with my extended family celebrating something very special and worthwhile!

Special Event #2 of the month was an Amazing Race activity for the youth in my ward that I helped out with. Check out the awesome finish line at my friend Shelly's house! The winning team got to bust through that. We had a few others for the other teams to run through too.

Remember a few posts back when I said that Meredith was my partner in crime for silly things when I mentioned a funny photo pose I wish we had done? Well here is the proof of that--she had Sara and I pose like showgirls (or something) while we were waiting for the teams to arrive. 😆

It was a well-attended activity and it was a lot of fun! Sam was there but John couldn't go that night.

Special events are the spice of life! 🎉

Sam's 13th Birthday

 Sam turned 13 last month -- my baby is now officially a teenager! 😭 We had a family party at home like last year and had catered Chick-fil-a for dinner, again like last year. Traditions are meant to be kept, after all! 

I didn't take the best pictures or very many, but they will suffice!

The opening of the presents

I used to get special cakes made for the boys (a fun and delicious tradition!) but they don't really care about that anymore, and Sam wanted an ice cream cake, so an ice cream cake it was (with my poor writing on it--I have good handwriting but it doesn't translate well to cake decorating!).

Sam is holding money here, which is what almost all of his gifts were by his request. He's saving up for a gaming computer system that he's going to pay 1/3 for.

Cake, singing, and wishes time!

Of the gifts I got for Sam, his two favorites were an extended release set of The Hobbit movies (he was thrilled that the third one is rated R (for violence), which I didn't realize when I bought it!) and a countertop/tabletop ping-pong set that makes playing in the kitchen easy! 

{Look at that stack of gift cash on the edge of the counter! 💰}

Sam really likes ping-pong. We have a table at the Cape house, but I wasn't going to get another one for our main house, especially since we'll likely be downsizing to a smaller house next year, so this countertop set is so easy and it works great! It's really fun!

Happy 13th birthday to my sweet Samuel, who has always been such a bright spot in my life! He's a talented and special young man with a great future ahead of him.

Going to Egypt in Boston!

 Last month I got to go on a little day trip to Egypt right in my hometown city of Boston. How convenient! Of course I'd much prefer the real thing, and some day I WILL go to Egypt on my dream trip down the Nile River with multiple stops at the pyramids and other historic sites and museums along the way. But in the meantime, some friends and I went to National Geographic's King Tut exhibit downtown. It will have to do for now, and it did!

Hieroglyphs galore! In an alternate life I would be an archaeologist with a specialty in Egyptology. Maybe someday!

The subtitle of this exhibit was "The Immersive Experience," and that's mostly what it was--a lot of digital images and exhibits and things like that, which was cool and I was happy with it as a wannabe Egyptologist, but actual artifacts would have been amazing so it was a little underwhelming, but still neat and worth seeing. (Sorry for that long run-on sentence!) Before Covid, there were actual artifacts in the exhibit, including an actual mummy or sarcophagus (I think), but everything had to go back to Egypt during Covid and now it's an immersive experience. The real things will have to wait!

How cute is Meredith!

An owl!

A really big gold box. 😄

If only it were the real thing!

I think I resemble the Muppet with the shoulder-length blond hair here. 😆

I like family trees and how they're laid out.

I didn't realize (or had forgotten), for example, that Nefertiti was King Tut's mother-in-law.

Queen Tut! 

King Tut's American harem 😆

I liked this section of the exhibit; it was very peaceful.

The grand finale was a totally immersive experience of a digital show all around us that went through the history and beliefs of King Tut's time in an artistic, musical, poetic way. It got pretty psychedelic at times, and I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't feel nauseated at all. It's because Ancient Egypt is my jam, that's why. 🙌

I'm including this picture to show the words on the screen. I knew about Osiris and Isis, but Nephthys was new to me.

Egyptian sands

Depictions of the afterlife

Someday I will travel to King Tut's tomb and see it for myself!

I didn't think of this until later, but I wish that Meredith and I had done Walk Like an Egyptian-style poses on either side of this huge picture of King Tut! Sharalyn and Beth wouldn't have been into it but Meredith is my partner in crime for silly things like that. 😄

When we were done at the exhibit we had a delicious alfresco lunch at a French cafe next door, and then Sharalyn drove us around the city a bit because she used to work there and she knows it well. This is the Seaport District (obviously).

I still love a good gift shop despite my reduced financial circumstances 😅. I judiciously chose a beautiful tote bag, a little gold pyramid, and a bookmark for my bookmark collection.

It was a fun day of traveling back in time to Egypt in Boston with some of my best friends!

Mother-Son Wrestling Trip!

 John and I got to have a special unexpected mother-son half-weekend for his wrestling tournament in New Hampshire on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. The boys were supposed to be with their dad that weekend but he was sick with Covid so they were with me instead, so I got to take John to the tournament in New Hamster (as I like to call it 😄). We went up on Friday evening so that he could do the early weigh-in, then we had a nice dinner out, then we went to our motel for the night and turned in early. We spent all of Saturday at the tournament, which was a good one for John--he wrestled with some very high-level guys which was good experience for him.

John really enjoyed his dinner at the 99! 😆 He was hungry--he hadn't been eating too much for a few days in order to be at the right weight for the tournament. This is one aspect of wrestling that I don't like (I don't think the wrestlers like it much either!). Anyway, needless to say, the food and drinks must have tasted especially good to him!

The next day it was wrestling galore, starting early and going until the evening. He wrestled in seven matches, won two, and almost one another one. These guys were so good! This is the highest-level tournament he's ever done. He was invited to do it by his club and was the starter for his weight instead of the back-up because the starter wasn't there.

I could never do this sport! Hand-to-hand combat; no thanks. But it's fun to watch (except for when my kid is getting pounded).

John's crotch is basically in the poor guy's face. Gross! The things these guys subject themselves to in this sport. 😆

This guy was nationally ranked and really good. He beat John easily and went a little easy on him, which his mother certainly appreciated. 😉

It was a long day. John was sore and slept well for the next few days. I enjoyed the time we got to spend together, just the two of us, which doesn't happen very much. At this time next year he'll likely be away at college, so I really do cherish all of the time I can get with him in this last year before he goes off on his own! 💖