7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 7)

This blog has existed for more than just seven Fridays! I'm so bad about writing Quick Takes each week. Oy. Well, here we go.

1. Today is the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. It makes me wish I'd tried a little harder to make it to Mass this morning...It also reminds me of something that has been at the back of my mind for a while now: that we should really Consecrate the family to the Sacred Heart.

2. Since today is a First class feast, this does away with the obligation for abstinence. Which means we can go to the cookout we were invited to, and enjoy some burgers and dogs on a FRIDAY! :-D

3. I've been slowly trying to get myself back into the habit of running. Throughout college, I ran basically every day, between 3 and 6 miles. The past few years, I've hardly done so at all. But I just feel so much better when I start my day out with a good run.

I've really only done it a couple mornings so far, but the muscles in my legs are getting used to it again. I wake up at 6am, and hurry out as soon as I can get dressed. Tom needs me back around 6:45, since that's when he gets in the shower (and he doesn't want to worry about Sly during that time). So after subtracting the time it takes me to stretch before and after, I really only have the time to run a bit over two miles. But for now, that's a big improvement over what it's been!

4. Last weekend was spent in Toledo, where our good friends Katie and Chuckie got married!

The happy bride and groom

I was a bridesmaid, Tom chose to wear own of his retro-fabulous suits, and Sly is keeping it classy in a dress shirt/tie and...a diaper

We wish them all the best (and pray that they don't move away too soon!)

5. We shared our suite in the hotel with some friends. Their son, Anthony, is a bit older than Sly, so he was teaching him all sorts of tricks - like how to use the stairs. Before that weekend, Sly had climbed our stairs a couple times (though not without needing to be caught by Mommy at some point during the ascent!), but he didn't seem all that excited by it. But after watching Anthony zoom up and down all weekend, it's now his favorite thing. He wants to be a big boy, I guess, and seems determined to be as good as his friend at getting up the stairs. He still can't get down on his own, though, so the baby gate remains firmly shut at the bottom!

6. The boys were pretty cute when they interacted.

Tom is baby-herding at the top of some stairs

Though it left me wondering if Sly is going to be a little bruiser. I've seen the way he abuses our cats and also Tom's face (he loves to smack and pinch Tom, but not me so much...hehe). His treatment of Anthony over the weekend wasn't much different, unfortunately :-/

This was taken a second before he tackled Anthony to the ground

And then here's the boys fighting over Tom's glasses case.

7. Following recommendations of various people (both "real" and in "blog world") who had also liked Downton Abbey, I had Netflix send me disc 1 season 1 of Lark Rise to Candleford about a month ago. I had heard so many good things about the show that I just went on faith that it would be good, and never actually bothered to look up what the show was about before I added it to my Netflix queue. At this point, it's hard to remember exactly what I thought the show would be like, but I do know that my expectations were nothing like the reality of it. I think I must have assumed it was another of those high-society costume dramas that the BBC is known for. But it's very different. Larkrise to Candleford, though, tells the stories of people in a small English town (Candleford) and an even smaller rural hamlet (Lark Rise) nearby. They are simple folk with more realistic sorts of concerns.



After watching the first few episodes, I was fairly disappointed, and sent it back in the mail. I'd given it a chance, and unfortunately, it just didn't grab me. I thought that was the end of it. But a few days later, what should arrive in the mailbox but the next installment? Darn! I had preemptively put the entire first season in my Netflix queue, assured that I would love it like everyone else did. I didn't want to "waste" the movie, though, so figured I could put on while ironing and folding laundry.

Well, I can't say exactly when or how it happened, but now I am hooked. I think it may have had to do with the intriguing and suspenseful romantic aspects. But I found myself enjoying many of the characters, and excited to see what would happen to them next. I'm on season 2 now, and there are at least two more after that! My recommendation is: watch it!

See Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes