The Weekend Wrap-Up

This weekend started the same as last weekend, the eating of frozen pizza (well, not frozen, obviously I heated it up in the oven first) and the watching of "Don't Forget the Lyrics". (The contestant on there was awesome! She was born without her right ear, though the inner workings are all there and intact, the outer ear is not. The surgery needed to fix it costs $100,000 so her goal was to win $100k. Which she did. When she correctly sang the missing lyrics and Wayne told her she was right, she cried, her boyfriend cried, her brother cried, I cried. Then Wayne gave her a pair of diamond earrings from himself and the show's producers so that after she had the surgery she would have her first pair of earrings to wear and show off her new ear. I thought that was so awesome. She ultimately won $200,000 before quitting. I was thrilled for her.)

On Saturday morning we headed out to eat breakfast at a fairly new "all you can eat breakfast buffet". It's actually a local barbecue place that recently started serving this buffet on the weekends. It. was. good. And cheap. For the 3 of us, all you can eat, including drinks, we paid less than $20. And they had eggs, 2 kinds of potatoes, 2 kinds of sausage, ham, bacon, biscuits and gravy, pancakes and syrup, fruit, cereal and juice. Keith said we're never going to IHOP or Denny's for a Saturday morning breakfast again. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to eat about half of my plate's contents because I get full so darn fast lately. But Keith finished off his plate and mine, so he didn't have to actually get a refill of food. We both love breakfast food, especially when nobody has to cook it. Because let's face it, I'm not going to attempt to fry bacon, the few times I've tried, our house stunk for a week. So let somebody else stink up their own place and we'll just come eat it and then be on our merry way.

After breakfast we headed out to do a little more Christmas shopping. Keith bought 2 things for his dad and I bought something for my brother. As we were debating where to go next, Keith called his mom to let her know about the purchases he had made and she told him that they were getting ready to leave to come to our house! They don't have a cell phone (the madness) so it's a good thing he called when he did because who knows how long they could have sat at our house before we finally came back home.

We rushed home and immediately went into high gear to get the house clean. Why is that always the case? Of course my intentions were to clean the house when we got home, but instead we had to do it in a rush. But it got done (save for our bedroom and bathroom, I just closed the door and walked away. Sometimes it's easier like that.)

The reason for their visit was because we had offered them several pieces of furniture that we had in our guest room. Now that baby #2 is on the way, we had to start thinking about the room assignments and what furniture was needed and where. Basically all the furniture in our guest room was deemed unnecessary, so they brought up an enclosed cattle trailer (his dad has cows that he hauls to auction once or twice a year, thus the need for a cattle trailer) and hauled everything off. We got rid of a bed (very sad to see it go, but much too big for a kid's room), a dresser, a 19" TV from the 80's, a VCR, a small cabinet, a clock, and a bag of cassette tapes. Not sure where all of that will end up, but between Keith's parents and his sister, everything had a home, so we didn't question it, we were just glad to be rid of it.

And now the real fun begins. Painting and more moving of everything. But that's for another post.

On Saturday evening, Garrett and I finally decorated the tree. He was very possessive of the ornaments and was not happy when I would hang a few towards the top of the tree. He wanted to be the one to hang every ornament. After a nice little discussion, we were seeing eye to eye and my tree is now decorated! Garrett grouped all of his ornaments by things that were alike. Santas in one section, snowmen in another, etc. I am very happy with the tree skirt and new stockings which I bought last year after Christmas. I do have a 4th stocking and even considered hanging it, but we don't have another stocking holder, so baby's will have to wait until next year.

Garrett and I decorating the tree. I'll post more Christmas decor pictures another time.

On Sunday morning, we got up and ready to go to church. For some reason Keith decided to get out the train that I had bought to set-up under the Christmas tree as additional decoration. This was about 10 minutes before we needed to leave the house. Garrett of course went ecstatic over the train and refused to part with it, so we let him bring a couple of its cars with him to church. We also decided to bring him into the church service with us because we only have a few more months before he has to be with us in church, so we might as well start bringing him in occasionally so he can get an idea of how that works. He was pretty good for his first time. He loved the praise band, of course, but he refused to whisper whenever he needed to say something to me during the sermon. He also broke one of the new train cars while sitting there. I'm just glad he did scream in frustration. That might have been awkward since our pastor was preaching on being thankful.

After church, he wasn't too thrilled to be heading to his class. He thought he had gotten away from the nursery that morning. But he seemed to settle down fairly quickly. (Our church has three Sunday morning services, we go to the 8:30 service and then go to Sunday school after that. I know many of you probably do the opposite on Sunday mornings and I realized what I just said might be a little confusing.) Keith went to his SS class and I went to mine (I teach 5th grade girls). Afterwards we met up with some friends of ours. They're awesome and wanted to give us a train table that they were getting rid of. They know how much Garrett loves trains and that we don't currently have one (though we have been looking at some). Their kids had 2 and they were wanting to cull some things before Christmas. So we totally lucked out! Then we all went to eat lunch together which was lots of fun. They have a daughter who is 2 and a half months younger than Garrett and a son who's 5, so Garrett enjoys their kids immensely and Keith and I enjoy visiting with the couple.

We then headed to Walmart for a fun-filled time of grocery shopping. At this point in the day, I wasn't feeling too good. I gave Keith a couple of items to take care of while I quickly went through the grocery section getting what I knew we needed for this week. Thankfully I never got sick in the store. I'm not even sure what you would do if you had the need to throw-up in a public place with no trash cans. I ultimately decided on throwing up in my purse if I needed to. Yes, it would be totally disgusting, but I wouldn't want to completely gross out the other shoppers. And now you're probably grossed out too. Sorry! Maybe I should wear a sign that says "I'm Pregnant" out in public in case something like that happens. I think it would be easier to forgive a random pregnant woman for being sick than almost anybody else.

We came home and put away groceries while Garrett proceeded to play with the new Christmas tree train for the next 4 hours!! He only stopped for bathroom breaks and a snack, that's it. This is how hardcore, serious my son is about trains. Initially I tried to help him with setting everything up, but I think I just got in his way. I can't even imagine how much time will be devoted to his new toys after Christmas. Ultimately the train is a piece of crap. Parts of the track have broken and one of the train cars is completely unusable. I'm sure trains like this weren't really meant to be played with as much as Garrett has. He's not rough with them, he just enjoys setting up a variety of configurations with the tracks and then watching the train race around them. I'm not sure if it will actually end up under the tree, but he's enjoying it nonetheless.

Last night was spent doing laundry and additional cleaning. Our church's annual Thanksgiving dinner was going on as well, but I was a little concerned as to how that would work for me. I'm sure the food would have been delicious, but I didn't want to take the chance that I would start feeling badly in the midst of a packed Fellowship Hall full of wonderful church people eating yummy food. If there was the slightest possibility that I would ruin that for everyone, then I didn't want to take that chance. I'm sure I don't need to go any further after my grocery store discussion above.

The cleaning out of our guest room has evoked a cleaning, organizing Keith. So he spent a lot of the evening cleaning out his closet as well as mine (!) and coming up with more things we needed to get rid of. Then this morning my hero killed the mouse that has had me riled up for the past week. He found it alive on a glue board in the garage, so he said "It met it's fate with a size 13." I don't want to know any more than that and I'm sure you don't either. I'm just glad it is gone. Did I mention that it ate a huge hole in my rocking chair cushions?!! We moved our rocking chair into the garage when Garrett got to be mobile because I was worried about him pinching his fingers in it. So I took the cushions off of it and wrapped them in a couple of garbage bags and set them on top of a few items in the garage. Somehow they had fallen to the floor at some point over the past couple of years and then met their fate with this mouse. Thankfully cushions like that are relatively inexpensive (atleast they were 3 years ago), but I'm still infuriated at the audacity of that mouse. The rocking chair will be coming into the house as soon as the Christmas tree leaves, so I guess I need to start hunting down some new cushions.

I'll leave you with a prayer request. Please pray for my dad. He slipped and fell on a patch of ice this morning while on his way into work and he broke 2 ribs. I know he's in a lot of pain and would appreciate your prayers.