Off to Thanksgiving #2!

Thanksgiving's an ongoing affar in this family. We're off to celebrate with Mark's family today. Me in my new sweater, Holland in her new "rock and roll guitar dress" and Mark, well, just in his regular clothes. Some things have to remain consistant in life.

Whew! All shopped out!

Back from the annual Black Friday shop-a-thon and am WIPED OUT! But the good news is: we got pretty much everything on our list AND I'm totally done Christmas shopping! WOO! Although truth be told VERY few things on our shopping list today were for gifts. Three or four maybe? Not much.

Our top 3 best moves while out and about this morning:
1. Opening a Kohls charge card which allowed us to circumvent the at LEAST hour long if not longer line. Sweet.

2. Finding the shortest checkout line at Menards by going through the aisles and see one in the middle of the store.

3. Leaving WalMart. It was a disgusting pit of humanity. Nothing was in a reasonable place to find it, the shoppers smelled of cigarettes and dispair and honestly, $7 boots just aren't worth it. blech.

So, now we're relaxing, doing laundry putting away our purchases and getting ready to go back out of town tomorrow for another Thanksgiving and then Granny's funeral on Sunday. *I* also have a nap in the hopper but it's a reward for putting away all of today's purchases and cleaning off the bed which is containing them at this moment.

This is why I'm not in charge! LOL!!

My tasks for Thanksgiving dinner today are green beans casserole and Ramen salad.

So far, I've forgotten to put the milk into the green bean casserole and forgot to buy the RAMEN for the ramen salad.

GAH!!!

This is why I'm not in charge of the whole meal! LOL!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Because being fancy is ALWAYS in style.

This came up today on a message board I participate on. What did you always want when you were little and never got?

Instantly, I knew my answer. AND, if you asked this question to anyone in my immediate family, they would know as well. Which is ironic because if they KNEW how much I wanted this item every year, why not buy it for me and save me the adult angst?


Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the white rabbit muff and beret. Circa 1976 JC Penney catalogue:



Why wouldn't that be on EVERY little girl's wishlist I ask you?? I would have been darn ADORABLE in it. And fancy. But no. It was not to be.

Today, I'm thankful for:

~ My stomach feeling a little better. At least I feel like I can handle coffee today. That's a good thing.

~ That this workweek will be at an end very, very soon. It's been a messy one. (I imagine a good person would say they're thankful to have a job but I'm pretty sure I don't fit into that "good" person slot.)

~ The next few days which will be filled with family. Some fun times, some somber times, but it's always good to see people.

~ Black Friday ads that are leaked onto the internet so that I can prolong my shopping high with a lengthy planning phase.

Those are my specific thanks today. Of course, all the traditional ones also apply, but those are boring. ;P

Please let this not be...

the stomach flu.

:(

Oy.

I don't feel good.

And I have way too much on my plate to add sickness to it.

Ick.

Go away now please.

Oh man. BUSY BUSY.

With Granny's funeral service now officially scheduled for next Sunday in addition to all the "traditional" Thanksgiving craziness, we now have a funeral to prep for at my work church. And the newsletter. And the weekly bulletin. And a pastor who's going out of town for the holiday as well.

Tomorrow, I'll be at work until the newsletter is fully editted and printed. Likely a minimum of four hours. And then I'll bring the whole thing home to fold all of them as well as label. Likely two hours.

Wednesday, we need to prep the weekly bulletin, get the funeral bulletin all but printed and take the newsletter to the USPS. No clue how long that will take. In addition, I need to get all the ingredients for the fun dessert turkeys I wanted to make for Thursday. Plus the ingredients for what I'm planning on bringing for Thursday's lunch.

Thursday, Thanksgiving! We're telling Holland about next year's Disney trip in the morning which should be FUN and then going to my parents' house. My aunt Wendy as well as my cousin Jill and her family are joining us this year and I'm really excited for that. It's been forEVER since we've seen Jill and her family!

Friday - up early for SHOPPING! WOOO! :) Holland will stay at Mom and Dad's and Mark and I will be out early. That afternoon, we'll put up the tree and unearth the Advent candles.

Saturday, heading to Mora for Thanksgiving part two with the in-laws.

Sunday, Granny's service. We'll be coming home LATE on Sunday night. Long day.

Monday, I'm off of work for a compassionate leave day since we have no idea what time we'll get back on Sunday. Holland may miss or be late to school depending on how Sunday goes.

Tuesday, tentative funeral service at my work church.

Oy.

So very much to do. Focus on the present, right?

Turns out, we *are* exciting!

So, yesterday after not being able to decide what to do with the kid-free day, we decided this:

Lunch out at the Chinese restaurant for their lunch special
Casino for a little
Early supper at the casino buffet
Swing by Mom and Dad's to pick up some odds and ends

Here's what actually happened:
Lunch at the Chinese restaurant for their lunch special
Casino for a long while
Normal time supper at the casino buffet
Casino for another long while
Home at 10pm to flop exhausted into bed.

So, close right? LOL The way we go to the casino is with a small, set amount of money. We're allowed to exchange between each other if someone's doing well and someone isn't, but you never ever take more money out. If you're losing, go home. Losing isn't fun anyway.

Turns out, we didn't need to explore the whole "losing isn't fun" idea because we couldn't stop winning. That's fun. To quote Mark after winning a random bonus, "That's good. That makes me feel good." LOL Before supper, we'd already won back the money we went there with and when that happens, back into the wallet it goes. Then you play on the "profits". We were getting tired, the profits were dwindling a little so I suggested we go back to this certain pair of machines to play out a last $20 each.

Well, glad we did.

I won over $220 just on that! LOL!! Once I won $140 and another time I won $140. Went right into the pocket and that was that! When all was said and done, we tripled our money. Not bad when we go intending to lose it all, huh?

We still think our current casino karma is from a few months ago when we were there and the power went out. We sat and sat and sat for as long as our patience would allow, but they never got the power back up long enough for us to cash out. There was an old couple next to me who had no choice but to sit tight as their hotel room was way up and they couldn't get up there until the elevators were running. We told them to hang out and when the power came back on, get over to our machines, cash it out and keep it. I'd rather them get it than some drunk college kid or casino employee. We probably had $60 in the machines that we walked away from and gave that old couple. Which, for that day was over half the money we started with. Since we play to lose anyway, it just seemed like a silly thing to sit around and wait in the creepy dark casino to collect. I think that good deed bought us some good favor somewhere. ;)

An enviable position...

The child is once again away for the weekend at my in-laws' house. According to this morning's email, having a delightful time and very nearly coming home with a kitten. (Please don't mention that to Boo.)



So, what do two adults with no child do? So far the answer to that question is go to sleep at 8:30 pm, wake up to have some coffee, check email and start the snowblower to see if it works after a long summer's nap.


Conclusion? We are EXCITING.

So, onto other topics.

I apologize for my lack of inspiration this week. I'm trying, I promise. To support this attempt, here's the story of our first school conference! Yes, I remembered to write about it - no reminder needed.

First, let me preface with this. I know my kid's smart and well behaved. I'll totally own it. DO I think she's the smartest and most well behaved child who's ever existed? No. I'm just not that sort of parent. She's on her own individual curve/path/what have you and really, it doesn't matter to me where she is in relation to other kids aside from gaining perspective on testing scores and such. It's not a competition. Trust me - while she can read anything you give her, the same child still scribble more often than not. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. LOL

Turns out, her teacher loves her. Started by saying, "She just so pretty! And so kind and polite and just a wonderful little kid!" I'll take it! lol She then went on to show us some of her assessments and she's performing FAR above "average" scoring for reading skills. Like, average scores 7 on these two tests that she scored 42 and 50 on. They'll be splitting according to ability after semester break and she wanted to know if we had concerns about it not being challenging enough for her. I told her my only concern was that she was hogging answering all the questions but otherwise, nope. She reads at home and can develop her reading skills here. At school she can use that time to practice patience. LOL Then her teacher said that if the school allowed it, she could get placed into 3rd grade reading easily right now. But they don't do that until 1st grade. I'm totally fine with that. She's five. She has YEARS and YEARS ahead of her to be pushed. Kindergarten is for adjusting to being in school in my opinion. Like I said before, strengths and weaknesses.

The reading thing is so funny to me as I just really don't know where she developed the skill. It's always sort of embarassing when people ask how she's such a good reader because really, we don't do anything with her. Somehow the TV taught her to read is the only thing I can figure. hahaha And it's not false modesty - I'd totally toot my own horn if I could, but it's just the way her brain is wired. She's an amazing mimic and memorizer. She can't sound out words, but if you tell her what a certain word is, it's locked in forever. Perhaps it's the actors' genetics she received from Mark and me.

She's performing high in all other areas. Her teacher really seems to have taken time to get to know Holland which is really comforting. You know the whole child is being assessed rather than just their academic performance. We talked about how Holland's SUCH a rule follower that she has trouble processing little reminders to sit still or stop chatting. She's so worried that she'll get in trouble, according to the teacher, that she can just see Holland's little face crumbling if she gets a reminder. Good! LOL!! Better than the alternative says I! I was the same way when I was little, so clearly, it's not permanent. ;)

Anyway, just a really nice conference. It's always good to hear people like your kid and that you and they are doing a good job. Hopefully this trend continues!