Okay, I’m always a Starbucks fan. But when they bust out their holiday cups and offer their holiday flavors, I really love Starbucks. In the past week, in addition to the always-beloved pumpkin spice, Danny and  have sipped on peppermint mocha, caramel brulee, and gingerbread lattes. And I’ve got one sticker to go on my “earn a free holiday drink” card until I can go claim that free holiday drink. Yum. Christmas is not only the most wonderful time of the year, but the tastiest.

After one of our Starbucks stops this week, we saw Catching Fire and oh my goodness, it was so much better than The Hunger Games, because so much more of the book actually made it onto the screen. I’m very rarely satisfied with move adaptations; overall though, I was pretty impressed with this one. But I think my favorite moment was at the cliffhanger ending, when a kid at the back of the theater erupted with a heartfelt “Nooooooo!” And then the entire theater erupted in laughter.

These Starbucks trips and visit to the movie theater — and everything else this past week — has been even better because we’ve been doing it all with family. We’ve been in Virginia since last Tuesday night, and we’re just now heading back to Florida today. The whole time, we’ve been with family — Danny’s and mine. It works out great that his family is on the Northern Virginia side of Washington, D.C., and I’ve got family on the Maryland side . . . all within about a 40 minute drive of each other. So when we come to stay with some family, we get to see even more family. I only wish someone would hurry up and invent teleportation so we could do it more often!

~ Laura