Calm Before the Storm

Collecting sports cards can be relaxing.  Rooting for sports teams can be quite the opposite.  Today's a big day for one of my favorite teams and I've been stressing out about it for the past week.

I figured I'd try to distract myself this morning, but catching up with a pair of items from Ryan's advent calendar that could be classified as relaxing or calming.

Let's start with the helpful hint that he wrote:

This was one of the most obvious haikus from his package.  It refers to this miniature bonsai tree:

The planting portion was super simple and took less than a minute to complete.  Now the waiting game begins.  I'm planning on taking the pot into my classroom.  Maybe watching it grow will help some of my 8th graders relax too.

The other "calming" present was building block related.  Here's his haiku:

And here's the gift:

It's one of those blind bags that contains one "Space Collection" build.  Here's the one I received:

Building block sets are often pretty therapeutic, but this little sucker was a challenging build due to its small size.  Here's a photo that shows the size compared to the mini bonsai planter, a Lego mini-figure, and a Kenner SLU:

The astronaut will accompany the bonsai pot and join the other Lego builds I have displayed in my classroom.

While on the topic of building blocks, I wanted to show off one more Christmas related gift before discussing the storm that quickly approaching.

My friend's mom gave me this awesome Lego set:

2024 Lego Star Wars #75375

I've thought about buying the midi-scale Millennium Falcon for over a year, but I just never got around to doing it.  So I was blown away to see that this was waiting for me under their tree.  Unfortunately, I haven't had time to build it... but as soon as I do... I'll show you guys what it looks like.

Okay... now let's get to the sports section of this post.  In a couple of hours, the Seattle Seahawks will host the Los Angeles Rams in the NFC Championship Game.  Division games always stress me out.  Division games that involve the winner moving on to the Super Bowl is next level.

On one hand, I haven't been as impressed with the Seahawks defense since these guys:

2014 Prizm Red, White, & Blue #200

On the other hand, I'm not quite as confident in the Seahawks offense as I have been in the past.  I'm predicting a close game... but honestly have no idea who wins this game.  I've watched a ton of analysis and prediction videos... and I feel like even the experts are pretty torn.

At this point the only thing to do is sit back, watch the game, and see how things play out.  Let's go Hawks!

Here are today's questions of the day...

Do you ever get stressed out over your favorite sports teams?

Out of the four remaining football teams, are you rooting for any of them?

If so, who?

Happy Sunday and sayonara!