Saturday Morning Musings Coffee Edition

 
Good Saturday morning to you all.  I am feeling pretty accomplished at how my weekend is progressing and after my to list is done around the house this morning, I will be cranking up the volume on the Christmas music station and getting started on turning the house into a gingerbread version of itself. Here is my morning brew-vanilla hazelnut, ready to help my energy level rise. I avoided all stores yesterday and my only venture out of the house was to meet up with my sisters and a few nieces for a couple happy hour brews of a different kind, and some appetizers.  Before Black Friday became such madness and selfish mayhem, the Friday after Thanksgiving used to be a sociable shopping day with my mom and sisters, leaving the men behind with kids, as we went about our day helping each other pick out just the right gifts, and ending with a later lunch, or as we did yesterday, a "lunch like" grazing of assorted treats. 

Being one of the youngest, it wasn't until I hit my teen years that me and my younger sister could come along.  A few of us have done some of this with our own daughters and daughter in-laws, but the fun factor with the craziness has dwindled.  The meeting up though in the later afternoon has continued. Even after my mom no longer shopped for gifts as she and my dad went the money route as it got to be too many  people to shop and wrap gifts for, she still looked forward to meeting up with her "girls" for that afternoon post Thanksgiving hen gathering. I missed my mom and sister yesterday afternoon-both would have been happily at our big table, listening in on the successes of gift buying, and generating ideas for the elusive gift for the hard to buy for.

I love days out with the girls-sisters, daughters, friends, and cousins.  Whether it is  shopping,  a movie, a museum, or just hiking around exploring nothing in particular, ending the day around a table whether with a coffee or a beer, is near perfect in my book.  On vacation, when it was still all five of us, my daughters and I would slip away and do our own thing while the boys did there's.  We'd end with a coffee shop, or if meeting the guys up for dinner, a child friendly bar and grill type place, earlier than they would arrive.  As DD#2 got older, it was a really good bonding time for the three of us. It is important to me to have traditions that are not formal traditions.  I like the comfort of certain routines, even if the people and the places vary.  I like knowing on a day that is blustery and cold, or humid and sticky, there are places to pop into to wind down or renew that are also encouraging for lingering and conversation. I hope you have a productive Saturday!

DD#2 unwinds in a coffee shop, while doing homework.