what i did today

I’ve decided every weekend should be 4 days.  And include lots of food that I don’t have to prepare.  Our Thanksgiving weekend was the perfect amount of relaxation that I needed.  And by relaxing I really mean cleaning.  Oddly, I feel more relaxed now that I know all the stuff is taken care of at home.  My laundry is done.  My dishes aren’t piled up.  I have plans for dinner.  My fridge is clean.  The piles of paper in my office are gone.  All that took work, but so worth it.
But the weekend wasn’t all about work.  Thursday we had a great morning.  I found myself up at 6am and realized that CVS sales started early.  I hated to shop on Thanksgiving but I knew if I didn’t do it right away, everything would be gone.  And what would I do without another free tube of toothpaste??  Once I got home we had a great time watching the Macy’s parade.  The girls loved seeing the Rockettes, Scotty McCreery from Idol and Elmo of all things.  The parade also included a high school band from my city.  So proud of our State champs!  Little known fact…Scott was a drummer in the band in high school and my dad was the drummer at church back in the day.  I appreciate a guy who can keep a beat!  We had Thanksgiving lunch with my parents and then dinner with Scott’s.  All very good food and company.
Scott had to work all weekend so even if I had found something for Black Friday, I couldn’t go.  It was the first Black Friday in a while I didn’t get a single thing.  Instead, my niece spent the night and stayed for the day which equaled busy kids and a busy mom.
Friday night I’ve already blogged about my trip to see Breaking Dawn.  It was all high-praise from me but BusyBeeLauren had an awesome post on all the things that bugged her and indeed, a few of them I left off my review.  The lack of sparkling and sudden appearance of a styrofoam cup were both very valid points.
So Saturday the girls and I did a little shopping just to get out.  They each had coupons from Toys R Us and Barnes and Noble from their birthday so we made a round at the mall to use those up.
Scott ended up getting off early Saturday but the most exciting thing we did was make chicken and rice for dinner which is to say, not exciting at all.  I ended up with a bad stomach ache by the evening, which I believe is unrelated to the chicken and rice, and basically was of no use whatsoever.  It was then I decided that the bad eating had to stop. 
I’ve decided to do the Daniel Fast again.  More for diet purposes than fasting but I started reading the Bible in 90 Days again today and it all just seems right that I’m cleansing my body and beginning with this reading.
Sunday was another day around the house.  I did a lot of research on Daniel Fast recipes and did some shopping to get ready.  The girls had a neighborhood friend over so they stayed occupied.  Or, I should say my front yard stayed occupied.
By this morning, I was very rested, ready to read for the Bible plan and get to work.  So we’re off to another week!  I hope your holiday weekend went well and your week is off to a great start.

A few weeks ago I blogged about our Christmas cards but we didn’t have any pictures for them!  Well, now we do! And all thanks to PJ who is the lady behind Red Oak Photography.  She also did our pictures from last year so I knew we were in good hands. 

Now the trick is figuring out how in the world to pick which ones go on our card.

If you’re local to the Fort Mill/Charlotte area, definitely get in touch with her.  I can’t say enough good about her!

So much this year.  So much.

• Adoption process
• Addition to the house
• Full time position
• eBook

Just to name a few.  And even those huge things feel incomparable to the protection and joy and wellness and peace and healing He’s brought to us this year.  I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.

I’m thinking of you who don’t have anything obvious to be thankful for.  Maybe this year it’s not easy to make a list.  Some years are like that. But He’s still there and even the hard things are grace.  If I’ve learned anything through my eBook is that God can make anything beautiful.  And I learned from Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts that even the pain you don’t choose can be grace too.

I knew November was going to be busy but I don’t think I was prepared for this busy. Between the eBook launch, work and extra stuff like birthday parties and concerts, I am completely whooped. And I have PMS right now which, if you know me, equals crying about how busy I am.

Last night I wanted to murder the dog and quit my job, in no particular order. Yesterday morning as I was working from home, the dog slipped in the house with mud all. over. him. So then he got it all. over. the house. There were mud tracks all over all the hardwoods, on my brand new cream carpet, IN MY BED (which wasn’t made) and all over my bathroom counter where he was trying to reach a piece of cake that Lexi had left there the night before. I think that was the final straw for me yesterday. Now I had to re-mop all of my floors, which by the way, I had PAID to have mopped the day before, wash ALL bed sheets and blankets and scrub my carpet clean. Did I mention I didn’t have time for any of this??

Emma’s sleepover is tonight and I’m not prepared in the least. There are still cups, plates, napkins and balloons to get. Pizza to order. Bingo to print out. I’m lucky I remembered to order the cake earlier this week.

In the meantime, Scott is super busy too. He’s helping the church make windows of some sort and trying to help a friend lay tile. I want to go have coffee with my friends and somewhere fit in going to watch Breaking Dawn between all that. Oh, and there’s this little home study we have to do tomorrow afternoon.

In other words, PLEASE MAKE NOVEMBER STOP.

I’m hanging in there although I could use some serious prayers. I know this is just a season. Once I have this work thing licked in about 2 weeks and birthdays and Thanksgiving are done, December is going to feel like a treat. Two more weeks, folks. Two more weeks.

Entangled on an iPad! 

Friday night was Lexi’s big birthday sleepover just in case you missed that post over the weekend.  The rest of Saturday morning was spent around the house cleaning.  We had our first of two home study visits with DSS Saturday afternoon.  It turns out to be a long but painless process.  She just sat down with us with a list of 11 pages of questions.  We turned to page 2 after an hour.  Yeah.  So we ended up getting through 5 pages and have the second visit scheduled in 2 weeks.  By the time she left, we were all starved and went to Moe’s with Scott’s parents.  After that, we had to run over to my parents’ so Scott could move some furniture. We were all WIPED OUT after our late night for the sleepover so we went straight home for bed.

Sunday morning was church.  It’s the normal but I’m super excited as they announced that they’d picked the next pastor.  I’m not sure if I ever mentioned that our pastor stepped down last Spring.  He had some personal issues to attend to and I thought he might go back to pastoring but has chosen not to.  I’m really excited for this new season of our church. 

Sunday afternoon Scott went mountain bike riding and Emma stayed with Scott’s parents after lunch.  Lexi and I went to do some shopping!  She has already outgrown jeans I bought her this summer on vacation.  But jeans were just not in the cards.  The 6x in the little girls section were all too small to button and the 7’s in the big girl section were way too big.  We ended up with 3 sweater/legging outfits.  As a jean lover it’s hard to fathom a winter wardrobe without plenty of jeans to choose from but it seems like Lexi is going to be all leggings, all the time.

Sunday evening I ended up making some soup for us and then headed over to Melissa’s house to work on the eBook.  I can’t stress enough just how much work Melissa (and even her husband Jeff) has put into this book. There’s been a lot of formatting and editing and behind the scenes stuff that I think it will be easy to take for granted once everything is set up.  I’ve gotten a lot of good response from other bloggers and I think this weekend is going to be huge.

Actually, this week is going to be huge no matter what.  Two projects I’ve been working on for over 6 months at work are implementing this week.  Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday evenings are all going to be busy.  The eBook launches Friday so the weekend will probably be anything but a respite.  But I had to launch on a day I wasn’t working and that was it before the holiday season.  What I’m trying to say is don’t get worried when you see me checking into Starbucks a few times this week.  And a few prayers would be welcome too.

Tomorrow I’ll be starting to post more about the book and web site until it launches on Friday.  See you back then and hope your week is starting off well!

 We ended up having a very full weekend.  Saturday started off with a bang at the Renaissance Festival to celebrate my niece’s birthday.  The last time we went I think I might have been a little shell-shocked.  The Renaissance Festival is serious stuff!  This year we went early and didn’t deal with the hours of traffic and crowds.  The kids were in a great mood and were happy to sit to watch many of the different shows.  We saw some poetry reading, Celtic musicians, jousting and even some belly dancing.  There favorite by far though was meeting Twig the Fairy.  She was the cutest fairy that put a rock and fairy dust in their hands upon meeting them.  She didn’t speak but giggle, smiled and did some sign language to say thank you.  I haven’t figured out yet why she didn’t speak (fairies don’t speak? perhaps she’s deaf?  saving her voice during festivals?) but her enthusiasm communicated everything.   If you go, be sure to try the soup in bread bowls.  We snacked on that during the jousting and it was the perfect lunch.

That evening we had dinner and cake to celebrate my niece’s birthday.  By Saturday evening I was pooped!  We did manage to get a round of Monopoly in and I have to say, the new electronic version using cards and the machine is pretty fun.  All the swiping helps fill my need to run registers at Target.

 Sunday’s theme was fall festivals!  After church and lunch we went to my mom’s.  But not before we had costume drama.  About two months ago I bought both of them genie costumes at the consignment sale and made a grave mistake by letting them play with them in the meantime.  Emma’s costume is completely missing.  Not to be found anywhere.  And since it was so cold, I had Lexi wear tights under her costume.  Lexi and tights and layers don’t get along well.  We eventually had to bag the genie outfit.  They both ended up wearing dance outfits a family friend had given them and named themselves fairies.  

My favorite part about the first fall festival was all of us playing a round of Bingo in one of the rooms.  They had it rigged somehow that we all won at one time.  It was hilarious when we all screamed Bingo together and realized what had happened. 

Sunday evening we headed over to Scott’s parents’ church where we used to go.  The kids had fun seeing their friends, eating a bunch of food and playing games.  And it is always good for us to go back and talk to the members we miss seeing every week.

A very full weekend, indeed.  I hope yours went well and you have a good start to your week!

Source: anthropologie.com via Daphne on Pinterest

A random adorable shoe

I don’t normally post on a Saturday morning but I wanted to say Hello.  My blog has been in the midst of switching hosts the last two days hence no posts.  Big props to Jason for helping me out.  He and his wife are the ones that took over OTHBlog from me and he’s been trying to convert my other sites for quite some time. 

For you bloggy, techy folks, I switched from a dedicated server on Surpass to Dreamhost VPS.  At peaks, the dedicated server would not hold up and it costs roughly 5 times as much as Dreamhost.  I hear it’s been working well for OTHBlog so we’re gonna see!  I think they have a Halloween special and you can get an entire year’s worth of hosting for $9.24.  No affiliate link there, just a friendly FYI.  Not that affiliate links aren’t friendly, but you know.

It’s probably been a good two days not to post as we were super busy with no time to post.  Thursday night we had some family pictures made to use on the Christmas card.  Oh, and speaking of, since the blog was down, I emailed the winners from the giveaway.  Congrats again to Jo Ann, Liz and Nichole!  After our photo session, we went to Beef and Brady’s to eat with my parents and then went home to quickly do homework and hit the hay.

Last night the girls and I had errands to run and ended up at Target.  The girls are coming up on their birthdays quickly and had gotten some gift cards to Target as gifts so of course they couldn’t wait to go spend it.  Since I’ve been cracking down on the toy-buying around here and they have to use chore money, buying just any toy they wanted was a huge deal.  And it was quite interesting watching them work out the math.  Emma, who had been begging me for colored dry erase markers saw they were $10 and said she didn’t want to spend her money.  I asked her why, if she was just begging me to buy them she wouldn’t buy them and she said, yeah, but that was your money.  Aha!  Lexi put down a toy that would have cost all her money and chose 3 smaller ones.  We still ended up with Squinkies in the house but at least it seems they are finally figuring out the value of money.

Today we are supposed to go to the Renaissance Festival.  It’s rainy and cold here though so I’m not sure if it’s going to happen.  I guess we’ll see and I’ll report in my Weekend Recap on Monday.  See you then!