what i did today

(One of few bright spots of my weekend. Gasped when I saw this walking out of Walgreens)

I’m still out here.  How’s that for a blogging tip to blog regularly and then I take off  for a week?  Murphy’s Law I guess.

• So I think the seasonal blues I get have somewhat descended.  I just, ugh. I hate winter.  I long for the days in the sun.  I nearly stopped my car on the way home from work today and just sat in the sun on the side of the road.
• Somewhat related, I was nothing but cranky pants all weekend.  I could feel myself lashing out and hating it AS I WAS DOING IT but couldn’t stop myself.
• Not to mention, we’ve had some family stuff come up and it can be emotionally exhausting at times.
• Also, this weekend I was physically EXHAUSTED.  Our entire household was in bed at 8pm Saturday night.  Even before bedtime, I couldn’t even keep my eyes open and was laid out on the couch in Scott’s lap while he played Call of Duty.  Not. normal.  I have a bit of a cold today so maybe I was trying (and failing) to fight that off.
• Other than that, I’ve been busy sneaking in Christmas shopping, reading the Bible (Day 8  today for me!) and meeting friends for the holidays in any time I would normally blog.

I know that was a lot of downer but I promise I’m ok.  Just didn’t want to blog when I was in such a horrid mood.  I will try to get back to our regularly scheduled program here!

So I took back 4 of the 6 pairs of boots I bought on Black Friday.  Five of them were wrapped and waiting for Christmas as of this morning. 

I’m  posting this explanation with both hesitation and humility.  I don’t want my family and friends I’m buying Christmas for to hear this and feel like I’m begrudging gift-giving or we don’t have the money for it.  I’ve had a blast picking out gifts this year.  Also, as always, I also don’t want you to think I want a pat on the back for this.  I just need to get an explanation out there to the people that are physically around me why I’m not wearing fifty eleven different pairs of boots all winter.  And since I made a big deal about getting the things, I kind of have to make a big deal about getting rid of them.  Such is the blogging life.  Also, I know I had fifty eleven options on how to get rid of these (Sisterhood of the Traveling Boots, anyone?) but in this case, I felt like the right thing was just to return them.  So if you’d like to hear me ramble a bit more about all this, here is 2 minutes and 51 seconds more!

Friday

• Lexi had a birthday party so the rest of us went to Moe’s.  Welcome to Moe’s!  Some of my favorite words!
• The girls spent the night with Scott’s parents and Scott and I played video games and read.  Wild and crazy I tell ya.  I actually read Jon Acuff’s new book Gazelles, Baby Steps and 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me About Debt.  If you are a Dave Ramsey-er it’s a must read.  The Free Spirit and Nerd Scorecards chapters were worth the entire book.  For the record, I’m a certified Nerd.  But we knew that.

Saturday

• Scott and I did some major Christmas shopping at Target.  Scott is the best at this.  Give him a name, point him in the direction of a department with a budget and he’s locked and loaded, ready to demolish our Christmas list.  It’s fantastic for this indecisive shopper that’s been shopping for 2 months.
• From there, we ran an errand for the church’s Christmas Boutique happening next week.
• The kids were just getting done with the Christmas parade in town so we fought the very congested traffic and managed to make the transfer.
• Saturday afternoon was spent wrapping all the presents we bought.  I would like to state for the record that Scott only wrapped 2 presents this year.  One of mine and our dog’s.  I’m not bitter or anything.  Curious though, who does the wrapping in your house?
• Saturday night we had Jaynee’s annual White Elephant Exchange so the kids headed off with Mom and Dad to their Christmas play.  Scott and I had a great time and walked away with reusable Barbie bags which the girls have LOVED toting around.  I have to mention the girls wore their Christmas dresses for the first time of the season and we made a quick stop at Wal-Mart to get them some hose.  It’s the first time we didn’t get white or black tights but got them nude hose.  They couldn’t decide if they were professional dancers or ice skaters.  I think in the video below they had decided they were headed for RiverDance.  In any case, I’m pretty sure Emma would be ok with wearing a pair every day.  Which, funny enough, would put her in good company with my Grandma whom I have never seen without a pair of pantyhose on.  Who also, God love her (as she would say), called and told me she was shopping at Toys For Us for the kids on Saturday.

Sunday

• We were all exhausted Sunday morning so we didn’t make it to the early service for church.  After that, we had lunch with his parents and then Scott spent the afternoon riding his bike while the girls and I played Barbies.  I had forgotten how fun it is to play with Barbie hair.  I gave at least 6 Barbies hair makeovers.  The kids are all, “Woooowww, her hair looks so much better.”  Yes, better than that awful nest it was before.
• Sunday evening I had a coffee date planned with Becky.  We had rescheduled the date about fifty eleven times (yes, that’s a number) and so I kept it while Scott took the girls to our old church’s cantata.

So that was our weekend.  We have a busy week ahead of us.  I’m helping at the Operation Christmas Child processing center tonight, having coffee with Melissa, holding a Mary Kay party and then helping out with the Christmas Boutique at church Saturday.  Whew!  Going to be quite the week!

We’ve been Monopoly-ing fools around here lately.  It’s a great activity that all of us can do without complaint.  Lexi usually loses focus in 15 or 20 minutes but Emma is a Monopoly-marathoner, taking over anyone’s spot that can’t hang.  And because of that, I’m always looking for ways to cut down our time in between turns.  I refuse to get the electronic version after I see how much math the kids learn so we’re unlikely to cut down on time with the money (although I’ll take any other suggestions!) 

But those pesky real estate cards.  I was always finding we were shuffling through with each property purchase, even if they were in color order.  So Lexi actually came up with the idea to put the cards near their space on the board.  I LOVE it.  I can’t tell you how easy it is to buy a property and just pick up the card there.  The banker can concentrate on the money!

BUT.

Poor Scott’s OCD couldn’t handle all that STUFF on the board.  Bless his heart.

So this is what he came up with.  Stack the bottom box in the top and then line up the color coded stacks in between.  The banker still has to be the one to grab them but still much faster.

Either one WORKS FOR ME!

See more Works for me Wednesday over at We are THAT Family

I’m so, so, so glad I took Friday off from work.  A four day weekend is just what I needed.  I finally got a weekend from my busy weekend!  Here are some highlights on what we did (or didn’t do) from the weekend:

Thursday

• CVS Black Friday deals to start the day which included 5 Reese’s cups and 5 King Size peanut M&M’s.  Totally and completely worth getting up.
• Macy’s parade.  The girls were in a trance watching the opening number and went around the house kicking their legs as high as they could.
• Dinner at Mom’s.  The girls wore their hats they made at school and Emma read a few Thanksgiving poems.  BEAMING I was.
• Tangled.  You know how I feel about that.  Full of WIN.  And Flynn.  Flynn is win.
• Dinner at Scott’s parents.  Good to get together with a big group of family for Thanksgiving.

Friday

• You heard about my boots.  We also hit up Chick-fil-a and the mall.
• Spent the afternoon doing fun things like laundry.
• Darian came over and we ended up out shopping again.  I couldn’t pass up 50% off at NY&CO for their jeggings.  I have them on as I type this and I keep asking myself why I waited so long to get them.  Seriously.  They have a thick elastic waistband and they are PERFECT for the Monday after Thanksgiving.  Just sayin’.

Saturday

• Saturday morning I spent serious time cleaning up and doing more laundry.  All weekend, I felt a little like I was spinning my wheels trying to clean but eventually it started looking more clean than not.
• Saturday afternoon we went to my mom’s for leftovers for lunch and the girls ended up playing for several hours with one of their friends that lives by them.  I did a lot of nothing which I was completely over by the time we left.
• Saturday evening the girls and I tore the living room apart to wrap all the presents we had so far.  It was killing them that none of them were their presents.  They know about Santa and I had presents for them so they were dying to wrap their presents.  Lexi even told Emma to get the nerf guns out and gave her permission to shoot her if she tried to come in the room while we were doing hers.
• Saturday night I completely vegged, completely forgetting to wrap their presents after they went to sleep, and caught up on the latest Chuck DVD I got in the mail Saturday.

Sunday

• Church.  So good.  Apologies for not doing a recap but grace.  God is FOR grace.  Pretty sure God is teaching me a lot about grace.  It’s been in my face like nobody’s business.
• Dinner at Scott’s parents.
• We had to return Emma’s pregnant Barbie.  Her arm came out of the socket as soon as we got her out of the box.
• The girls and I played school for TWO HOURS.  Actually, we played homeschool.  Which meant I was the teacher.  It included being dropped off, sitting in the hall waiting for class to start, craft time, reading time, math, computer time, snack time, related arts.  Serious stuff.  Can we say we were all ready for school to start back today?
• Last night I spent the whole night finishing a book for the INSPYs.  It is KILLING me not being able to review these books.

So there, I don’t know if that does anything for posterity by blogging our every move but we had a great, relaxing weekend.  Hope you did too!