This was a crazy weekend. By the way, Happy 1st day of Winter. On Sunday the 21st we celebrated the shortest day of the year by shopping. My parents wanted to go Christmas shopping and Sunday was the only day we all had free. I was supposed to be singing with the Girl Scout choir at the Charlestown Retirement Community(my old work place). Unfortunately, the facility was on lock down for respiratory diseases and they had to shut down the nursing home and assisted living facility. So no one could go out or come in. So I had the day free and decided to take my parents shopping and out to dinner. They mall was absolutely packed, but we had a good time shopping and then stopped to get some dinner. Tom and the kids joined us. Everyone was too tired for a movie, so we headed back home. We did stop into the Bass Pro Shop to say hello to the fish and try our hand at the shooting range though(big kid video game). Tom stopped into my parent's apt afterwards to reset their tv(mom keeps pushing the wrong channels). I think we wore mom and dad out by walking the entire mall(it is quite large since it is an outlet mall). Plus I had to park far away-even the handicap spots were all taken. My parents were already pooped out before we left. INstead of going to church in the morning, they stayed back at the apt for an in house service. Their facility has had some type of Christmas entertainment every day. I think Mom and Dad are going to be worn out with Christmas activities. They were having a sing a long when we stopped in. And someone had dropped off a huge box of chocolates, cupcakes and cookies for everyone to share at the front desk.

It was nice not to have to rush on Sunday. I had some extra time this weekend in my wrapping, packing and card filling out schedule. I had planned on having all the neighbors over for our traditional White Elephant Gift exchange party Saturday night. I spent Friday shopping, cooking and cleaning. On Saturday morning, Tom informed me that he  had a fever and did not feel well. We decided to cancel the party. WE will reschedule in January. Tom had been in Chicago this past week. He was very cold and miserable. He had to sit on the plane waiting for them to de-ice. I don't think Northrop should let him travel right before the holidays.

I also spent an hour sitting in the church parking lot SAturday morning waiting for some info on a scheduled ski trip for Scott with the Teen Church group. We were waiting for everyone to meet to car pool to ski in Pennsylvania. We were not alone. We also waited with a friend of SCott's and her Dad. After an hour I was able to speak to the priest who was in the office after morning mass. He was able to contact the teen program director via telephone. We only had the office phone number and the office was closed. Turns out they had cancelled the trip the night before. We however never got the phone message. The ski trip was rescheduled for February. Apparently the snow tubing was closed and they wanted to wait for the opportunity for the younger kids to attend. So Scotty was bummed(again) but he has something to look forward to.

So a whole lot of nothing going on during the busiest time of the year!  Instead, I took the kids down to the Inner Harbor with me on SAturday afternoon. OUr Girl SCout troop was invited to sing at a German festival downtown. They set up a german village with small shops including German bakeries, beer garten and holiday decorations. I picked up a few German Christmas tree decorations. It was a lot of fun to get up on a small stage and sing too. Allison and Scott enjoyed munching on german treats and shopping while I sang on stage.

On Friday, besides all the running around I had done for our party, I had time to get Cookie over to the pet store for a hair cut. I also had to meet with my parents broker to take care of some end of the year finances.

Allison managed to get out and get her hair cut. She also took herself to the doctor for a flu shot and to have her foot xrayed. It was still bothering her. They thought she may have a stress fracture, but it looks to be fine. Just sore and she can't really run on it. The doctor told her she should rest it up for another 8 weeks. At least Allison will be taking it easy while attending school this winter break. It is just difficult to walk around campus. She did well this term-all As and Bs.

Scott was very busy this past week. The teacher's crammed in lots of papers, tests and assignments for school. His little brain was fried.  He also finished his last confirmation class. He has  finished his volunteer hours too. He continues to altar serve which counts for volunteer hours.  Now he just has to complete a retreat in the spring and a few more Sunday night religious classes. He is almost there. He and Tom also got their hair cut this weekend. Everyone is ready for the holidays.

Now just a few more Christmas cards and gift wrapping. Plus packing for our trip to Florida!

Scott enjoys some type of Apple dessert at the German Holiday village

We are getting so much closer to Christmas! Our family keeps up with the holiday festivities. I started mailing out Christmas cards. The Christmas decorations keep going up, including the tree.  My parent's enjoyed a Christmas luncheon with their Sr Center group at Olive Garden on Weds. On Friday, Tom and I stopped by their apt to assemble a new power lift chair we bought for my mom over the Thanksgiving holiday. Sam's club had their power lift recliner chairs on sale. Dad has been enjoying his chair, so we thought mom could use one too. Especially since I took her to the orthopedic MD last week and he told her that her knee looked pretty worn out. She can use all the help she can get. I also kept Tom busy hanging some of their paintings and photos as well as repairing some plugs and bulb sockets on a few of their lamps. Their apt looks very festive!

We took them both over to our house Friday night for dinner. I planned on taking my mom to a Cookie Exchange party at our neighbor's house. Instead, she got comfortable watching a movie with my Dad and Tom. So while they enjoyed watching "The Conspirator", a movie about Lincoln's assassination, I headed down to the neighbors to enjoy a cookie swap. I had more than enough to share with my parents when I was done. On the way back to drop them off at their apt that evening, we swung by a few "over the top" decorated homes. I had to dodge a deer in the road during the tour! Glad I missed it!

Allison came home on Weds after surviving her finals week. She drove home by herself since her roommate had another final scheduled on Thursday. Before she left, the two girls dropped by a nearby townhouse complex to scope out housing for next school year. As a junior, the kids are no longer allowed to stay in the dorms and have to use college apts or off campus. We certainly were spoiled at MSU, living in the dorms for all 5 years! Allison is certainly happy to be home again(and done with classes). I quickly put her to work though. She is helping to put up Christmas decorations. She was also my busy little baker. She made up lots of Hershey pb kisses cookies and chocolate turtles with rollo candies and pretzels. I also made no bake, chocolate peppermint schnapp cookie balls. This way there were lots of cookies available for my Cookie exchange on Friday night with the neighbor ladies.

We even had enough left over for Scott to take some cookies to his friend's Cookie exchange on Sunday afternoon. He enjoyed visiting with his friends, playing video games and exchanging lots of goodies.  He brought home a generous supply of even more various holiday cookies! Plus his friend's mom gave all the kids Christmas socks, hand lotion, a huge container of hot cocoa mix complete with peppermint and marshmallows. Not to mention a small box of dog treats for Cookie. Crazy!  I think it made up for Scott's disappointment in missing out on a trip to New York City this Saturday. One of his friend's family asked him to take a bus trip up to NYC to see all the Christmas decorations and visit the zoo, museum, FAO toy store, whatever. But his friend Jason got very sick Friday night, so they cancelled their trip. Oh well. It stays on Scott's bucket list. Instead, he enjoyed our night having dinner at our friend's house, The Plunketts,  celebrating his and his friend Bryce's belated birthdays. Bryce and Scott share the same week in November. Plus we enjoyed catching up with their new puppy, Ripley.

I also took my parent's and Allison to listen to the Holiday concert with the US Army Jazz Ambassador band. Last weekend, Tom and I heard the US Army band and Chorus downtown at the symphony hall. This weekend it was the jazzy version of the holiday concert. Again, very good and very free. And very close as the concert was held at a local high school. My parents really seemed to enjoy the music(and Allison too).

 On Sunday I joined our Girl Scout choir at the B and O railroad for a Holiday concert. I really enjoy the train museum, especially when it is all decorated for the holidays. I would have brought my parents, but it is too hard to keep an eye on them while I am busy singing with the choir. Plus I get in for free, and they would have had to pay(it is a bit pricey too). It certainly was worth it to take the kids when they were little. Scott especially loved the trains.

So we are excited to have Allison home. Scott wishes he could spend more time with her, but he is still busy with his confirmation and religious classes, as well as school. They are both running together and squeezing in some video games though. And they even had a little time to do some Christmas shopping.

Tom was gone last week working in the San Francisco area. He even had time to stop into Paso Robles to pick up a few bottles of wine. (less crowded than Napa Valley). I was just glad he was able to fly out of San Fran before the big Pineapple Express rain storm hit. Except he came back home at the tail end of a Nor'Easter on our coast. It made for a bumpy plane ride.

Holidays at the B&O Railroad(oldest railroad in US). Original roundhouse now museum.

 Lots of train gardens

 and big decorations.

 Holiday lights at one Neighborhood house, complete with Santa and 8 tiny reindeer, plus Rudolph!

 Gpa and Gma Bozyk's apt and their Holiday decorations

 Cookie and Scott love to snuggle

 Scott and Allison take turns playing with the cavachon puppy, Ripley.

I also squeezed in my yearly medical check up on Friday. I even managed to get my shingles vaccination. They usually wait until you are in your 60s to give out the shot, but since I had shingles 3 years ago, I asked to get it early. This injection is supposed to last a lifetime, so I hope I never experience it again!

We also had a few Birthdays to celebrate this past week. Linda Seitz enjoyed her Birthday in Indiana this weekend. Happy Birthday Linda! And we enjoyed eating ice cream cake to celebrate Cookie's #6 Birthday! Wow time flies!

Time to fill out more Christmas cards! Kathleen

By the way, I failed to mention some other interesting news last week. First off, Tom was displaced from his office when 2 floors in his building caught fire! I could only think it was caused by all the computers since it is a building full of engineers and business managers. That seems to be the case. He says nothing serious was damaged-mostly everything got wet though when the sprinklers went off. So he is working out of his briefcase currently.

On a better note, I finally heard back from my lawyer over the lawsuit I have been fighting since June this year. I was being sued from the woman that hit me from behind in a car accident 3 years ago for a small amount of $750,000! I had to  take a day off work and give my account last month to the lawyers. I just heard that the case against me is finally being dismissed! Yeah! Now I have an extra $750,000 to spend on Christmas presents! I may however still be brought in next year as a witness. I sure hope not. K-

Happy St Nick's Day! Saturday we celebrated St Nick's Day by opening our Christmas stockings. Allison had to take most of her stocking to school last weekend(which was mostly filled with study snacks). She is busy studying for finals coming up next week so I sent her and her roommate some goodies to keep them awake and sharp(or just full).  We look forward to having her back home next week. She also enjoyed taking a break with a formal dance party with the Ultimate Frisbee Team.

Our weekend was again quite busy. I managed to type up my yearly Christmas letter and picked up our Christmas pictures. Now I just have to put the two together! I talked Tom and Scott into going out to dinner at The Red Robin Friday night while I picked up our photos. We wanted to stop in and pick up some Red Robin gift cards since they have a promotion and were giving out a free movie ticket to The Hobbit with every $25 gift card you buy. A good deal!  And a good meal!

On Saturday, Scott and I got up early to volunteer with the Boy Scouts at the Jingle Bell Run in our local park. It is a 5K around the lake. When we arrived in the morning, they already had more than enough help and were out of volunteer tshirts. The volunteer coordinator asked us to wait until the race was over and then we could help clean up. Instead of waiting, Scott asked if he could run the race! We quickly signed him up, changed his shirt, slapped on a timer and a number and away he went! It was his very first 5K race! He did pretty well considering he had started the race at the very end. Also the sidewalk they ran on was very wet and slippery and crowded. So it was hard to get around the walkers, strollers and dogs. But he managed to finish in 32 mins. And he didn't even have on the right shoes! So that was the end of our volunteering! We headed home so he could get busy studying and doing homework assignments. Tom helped him review his science homework since Tom was heading out of town on Sunday. In the evening, Tom and I invited our neighbor Dan and California friend, John D out to dinner and then to  The US Army Band and Choir Christmas program at the Meyerhoff Performing Arts Center in downtown Baltimore. The concert was free and once again, we were incredibly impressed with their performance. I was just surprised they did not fill up the auditorium. I don't think enough people know about them.

On Sunday, Tom headed off to California for work. Scott got busy on his homework. I headed out to participate in the Mayor's Christmas Parade in Hampden with the Girl Scout choir. It was quite a work out-a long, 2 mile uphill hike with us singing and doing hand gestures to match the words. They had 150 entries-we were #63! We tried to participate in this event last year and it was snowed out. At least the weather cooperated this year. A chilly but sunny 48 degrees. And I am definitely getting my fill of the holidays.

Tom and Scott hung lights outside last weekend, complete with a light show and music. So this weekend we started tackling the decorating inside the house by putting up the Christmas tree. Last weekend I helped my parents decorate their apt with a Christmas tree and manger scene. It looks like I tweaked my back hauling containers in and out of their storage unit. It made it difficult to sit at the computer all week at work and get much done around the house.

Unfortunately, work decided to switch to a whole new computer system(it is not fun). And unlike last time when we all started, there was no orientation to this new system. So I plan on spending a lot more time at the computer(and I hope my back starts to feel better so I can type more!). I also had to sign up for next year's benefits. What a pain. On top of that, I had a few teacher conferences to attend at Scott's school. I wanted to chat with a few of his new teachers to get an idea of what he should expect next year. They will be recommending next year's classes by Christmas! I just wanted to make sure Scott was on the right track. We would have loved to move him to another Spanish class since I found out his current class is full of sophomores and juniors that failed Spanish 1 and were retaking the course. Great. They really don't care about studying now.

Scott is also continuing with his Weds night Confirmation classes. He had to skip his Sunday night catechism class this week because of all his homework.

I also took some time off work to take my mom to an orthopedic MD to check out her knee. She had a left knee replaced about 10 + yrs ago. She decided it did not hurt enough to go through surgery again(but it is pretty worn out).  I was just happy that my Dad decided to attend the Sr Center Swim program on his own this week while mom was at the doctor's office. A big step in both of their new lives. I just wish I also could have enjoyed the family Holiday brunch with them on Sunday.

Can't be in two places at the same time(don't know if I want to either!). Now I have to go work on cookie making for the cookie exchange next weekend. Fun never stops! K-

Scott runs his first 5K!

 Run, Run as Fast as You Can!

 Even Santa is on the Move!

 Mayor's Christmas Parade -Go Ravens

 Even Darth Vader showed up!

 Our GS choir

 Cafe Hon in Hampden(as seen on Kitchen Nightmares)

Happy Thanksgiving! What an amazing Holiday break! Allison came home on Tuesday night from school. Scott was in heaven. He finally had a real person to play video games with instead of linking up on the computer with all his friends.

On Weds, Tom, Allison and Scott were all home during the day. I took advantage of the kids being off school to have them go to the dentist. Afterwards, Tom took the kids and our friend John up to Hershey to see a hockey game. They all had a great time(even though the weather was not so great). We had our first real snow that day. Much too early in the year for us. I had to work that day, so I was home busy cooking and cleaning Weds night and getting ready for Turkey Day. I had a full, long weekend scheduled for everyone.

On Thursday morning we skipped the 5K walk/run at the YMCA. Allison was still recuperating from her ankle sprain/strain(it looked pretty bad last week). We had hoped to participate in our neighborhood canned food drive and fun walk/run, but for some reason it was cancelled. Instead, everyone slept in while I continued cooking. When the kids got up, I put them to work in the kitchen. Allison made several batches of cookies-pumpkin spice and maple bacon sugar cookies(those were incredible-tasted like pancakes). Scott made the sweet potatoe casserole. Tom cooked the turkey on the grill. I had all the stuffings, mashed potatoes, jello, asparagus and a special pumpkin spice pie for Scott's Birthday. Yes, he had another Thanksgiving Birthday(two so far in his lifetime). He is a big 15 year old. I cannot believe it!

I then sent Allison off to pick up my parents from their apartment. We all enjoyed watching the Lions football game and then talking to my brother Dan and brother Mike via Skype on the computer. After dinner I sat with my mom and helped her fill out her Christmas cards as well as "We've Moved" cards. We were all pretty exhausted and quite stuffed ourselves! We never even made it to dessert as we were all so full. Scott did get to open his birthday gifts too. Tom set him up with a new computer system and he had several new video games to keep him busy over the weekend.

On Friday morning we headed over to the Target portrait studio for our annual Holiday Family photo shoot. The worst part is the waiting. Even though we have an appointment, they always run behind at the holidays. While we were waiting, one of the customers in front of us recognized Tom from a class he was teaching at Morgan State University(small world). We were just impressed that they had squeezed so many people in their party into such a small studio(about 12 or more people!). And we just had our little group of 4. We seem to have started a tradition of wearing our favorite team shirts(you will have to wait for the Christmas card to see whose team we went with this year).
After our photo shoot, we headed out to lunch at our new Buffalo Wild Wings and then hit the movie theaters. Allison had been waiting to see Big Hero 6. We all really enjoyed it. Especially the initial cartoon before the movie. It reminded us of our Cookie dog. After that movie, we had dinner, dropped Scott off at his exercise class, and then I picked him up with his friend and we all went to see another movie "The Hunger Games" Sequel. I think the boys were a bit disappointed in this movie, but I have sat through all the Twilight movies and dealt with it(a whole lot of build up to the next movie). I decided to ask Scott's friend to spend the night so he could have a Video game partner. Allison was busy working on a school project online with a classmate. Plus Scott did not really do much for his birthday this year. They boys had a great time staying up late and playing video games.

On Saturday morning we were busy putting away Thanksgiving decorations and pulling out Christmas decorations. Scott and his friend had one last video battle before his friend headed home. In the afternoon I decided to take the kids down to the National Zoo for Zoolights. Our family tried to go down there last year, and it was literally "a zoo". We never found parking and it was solid people. So Tom skipped this year's attempt. However, I planned ahead this year and found close parking, prepaid and Allison drove us in her little Honda Fit. We got there just before the sunset and lights were already on. The parking was at a nearby hotel garage, just a few blocks walk from the zoo. It was not crowded and we had a great time walking around the animal displays and seeing all the lights. Plus as members we got a special snack including cupcakes, salted choc.chunk caramel brownies and real hot chocolate with melted chocolate. Yum(we went back for seconds). And Tom missed out. But he was happy with his football(lots of football). Yeah MSU, sorry UofM.

On Sunday, Scott served mass and we checked out the Church Holiday gift bazaar. Allison was packing up to head back to school along with her St Nick's day bag and some holiday decorations.This year she does not have much time to spend at school before the holiday break, so we kept the decorations small. Scott got busy on his homework, and I spent the afternoon at my parent's apt singing Holiday songs with the Girl Scout choir(I got us a spot on their entertainment list). We did not have a huge group, but we did a terrific job(I thought) and had all the residents singing along. Including my parents. Afterwards I got busy helping them decorate their apt for Christmas including putting up a tree and their manger. I also dropped off items to decorate their door with the staff.

So overall, quite a jam packed weekend of activities! Lots of fun!

And another Happy Birthday goes out to Sheila Bozyk who celebrated her special day on Friday, Nov 28th!

Now starts all the fun!  Kathleen

One of my favorite Bday gifts!

 Scott studies WWI in his homemade German uniform(my mixing bowl and duct tape!)

 Happy Thanksgiving!

National Zoo and Zoolights(Scott and Allison)