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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful time of the year. I choose to show respect to the turkey and Thanksgiving Day and to keep any Christmas decorations packed away until after the November holiday. It\u2019s so worth it getting the house festive in time for the first holiday party of the season, the Dining Divas Christmas, but that means a jam-packed working weekend right after Thanksgiving in order to be ready for the girls the first Thursday of the month.<\/p>\nWhat brings us together every month is dining together, but that\u2019s not what keeps us together. It\u2019s the camaraderie and the friendships. It\u2019s wonderful knowing that each month we\u2019ll be getting together, and I can\u2019t remember a time that we haven\u2019t. And one tradition we all look forward to is the Divas Christmas. Originally, we used to dress up and go to a fancy restaurant in December, which is fun, but I think we all agree. It\u2019s so much better with the casual gatherings and Divas Christmas traditions at home.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s dinner was simple\u2026soup, salad, and breads. Our Culinary Diva brought a delicious garden salad to start us off, and then we enjoyed taco and gnocchi soups. The Traveling Diva and the Overworked Diva brought delicious beer and soda breads as well as cornbread that we dipped into the soups. Fortunately, we weren\u2019t overstuffed so we enjoyed sampling the dozens of cookies everyone brought for our cookie exchange.<\/p>\n
As always, we collected toys for charity.\u00a0\u00a0 The classics were present like Candyland and Monopoly, and \u201cFrozen\u201d still is a popular item for just about every type of toy. We were close to having to break open one of the games just to get a pair of dice for our Rob Your Neighbor game. Thanks to modern technology, we had options, like Amazon\u2019s Alexa. But we decided to go with a mobile app since that felt more like the real thing versus an interactive voice device.\u00a0\u00a0 Next year, we\u2019re going old school again with a pair of dice. Paper weights were the \u201cfavorite\u201d gift of the evening. \u201cWho uses paper anymore?\u201d said the Ungrateful Diva.<\/p>\n
We talked politics. Of course, we did. It was the first time we\u2019d been together since the election.\u00a0\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter whose side you were on. We all agreed the campaigning this year was embarrassing and disgraceful. We talked about the millions of dollars that were wasted on advertising for the election and pondered what great things could have been done had that money been used to help the community instead. We talked about the violent attack on the Ohio State campus just earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
So, when we moved onto another Diva tradition, sharing of a poem with a message of hope or a reflection of the year prior, it really hit home. This year\u2019s was written by Lori McKenna and made famous by Tim McGraw.<\/p>\n
Called \u201cHumble and Kind\u201d, as we all listened to the melody and the words, it was a great reminder to remember where you came from, to enjoy the little things, to keep smiling, to be polite, and so much more. Nothing like what we saw during the campaign season. But something to strive for in 2017 and many more elections to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Lisa Kampeter \u00a0\u00a0 The most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful time of the year. I choose to show respect to the turkey and Thanksgiving Day and to keep any Christmas decorations packed away until after the November holiday. It\u2019s so worth it getting the house festive in time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columnists","category-entertainment-travel","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n
Dining Divas Break Bread, Play Games, Exchange Cookies, Enjoy Their Own Holiday Traditions - flovalleynews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/flovalleynews.com\/?p=16602\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dining Divas Break Bread, Play Games, Exchange Cookies, Enjoy Their Own Holiday Traditions - flovalleynews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Lisa Kampeter \u00a0\u00a0 The most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful time of the year. I choose to show respect to the turkey and Thanksgiving Day and to keep any Christmas decorations packed away until after the November holiday. 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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 The most wonderful time of the year can also be the most stressful time of the year. I choose to show respect to the turkey and Thanksgiving Day and to keep any Christmas decorations packed away until after the November holiday. It\u2019s so worth it getting the house festive in time for the first holiday party of the season, the Dining Divas Christmas, but that means a jam-packed working weekend right after Thanksgiving in order to be ready for the girls the first Thursday of the month.<\/p>\n