Sunday, November 25, 2007

The Official End of Thanksgiving

Well, Thanksgiving is officially over now. It was so hard to say good-bye to Ciaran today at the airport. You might think I’d be getting used to these good-byes by now, but the funny thing is, each time seems just as tough as the last time, if not tougher. Well, dwelling on the fact that Ciaran is winging his way back to New Hampshire isn’t helping so a few brief moments thinking back on fun times this weekend might be just the thing to help me with this.

I treasured every moment I had with Ciaran this weekend. It was an intense whirlwind of a weekend though. There were so many people Ciaran wanted to see and his oldest brother (the brother I hadn’t met yet), sister-in-law, nephew and niece ended up making it to Michigan for Thanksgiving as well. Even with two of Ciaran’s siblings not there this weekend (they both live in California), there were still a ton of people around at all times.

I also had an absolute blast hanging out with Ciaran’s nephew this weekend. His niece is a sweetie too of course, but I spent more time with Shea, watching the Saginaw Spirit play, “partying” with him late into the night, watching movies, talking about soccer (he thinks Chelsea are a bunch of cheaters....further proof of Ciaran’s corrupting influence on this dear boy) and of course we spent quite a bit of time talking about how cool Uncle Ciaran is. Shea thinks Ciaran is a celebrity because no matter where they went this weekend, he was accosted by people who knew him (a lot of these people were former soccer players he’s coached over the last ten years, but Shea still thought it was pretty amazing). :-) I myself was amazed at Shea’s incredible memory. I hadn’t seen Shea in quite awhile, it’s been at least two years and he still remembered playing soccer and basketball with me one summer and he also remembered when he was probably only four years old (maybe five, I’m not sure) going back to my pond when we had snapping turtles. I thought that was pretty impressive...I’d even forgotten about the time when the turtles were back at our pond. Oh yes and Shea even gave me a job lead; he filled me in that, in his opinion, Madison schools are pretty good and I could move to Wisconsin when I get my teaching certificate...apparently there’s a house for sale close to his house. I don’t know though, Madison is even further away from Uncle Ciaran; that might be pretty tough. :-) Ah fun times, I hope Shea will come and visit again soon!

And I can’t forget about Ciaran’s niece...she is a riot! She insisted on being called Meatball or Woof-Woof almost the entire time. She likes to pretend she’s a puppy. I addressed her as Neeva once and she looked up at me shaking her head and stated so seriously, “No Neeva, I’m Meatball” and proceeded to curl up in Ciaran’s lap. She even got some little playmates to play puppy too and Ciaran dubbed one of those little girls Spaghetti. Four-year-olds are so much fun and Spaghetti and Meatball were the best!

OK, next, you had to know this was coming. ENGLAND’S NOT GOING TO EURO 2008!!! What is this world coming to?!!! Ciaran’s dad ordered the England v. Croatia game on Pay-Per-View for us and so I got to watch it live on Wednesday. What a devastating game! All we needed was a draw, that’s it, not too much to ask for is it? If you would have told me when World Cup was ending...and as I kept reassuring myself that Euro 2008 would be here before I knew it...if you would have told me England would not even qualify I would have laughed in your face...and now....that’s exactly what has happened. Such a bummer. I don’t even know what I’m going to do this summer...who can I possibly support? England is all I know! So the search is on, I’m going to be researching teams this winter and hopefully by April reach my final decision.

All right, there is so much more I could and should write about, but I need to eat and work out yet before bed and I have an early morning tomorrow. I meet with Central’s principal and my potential host teacher first thing in the morning, so I need to be well rested for that. Night!

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