Black Friday Shopping

Did you do any?

Although I said that I was going to, I didn’t. We slept in until 8:30am instead. The main reason that I didn’t go was after getting up on Thanksgiving morning and looking at all the sale ads, I was able to go online and purchase everything that I wanted at the Black Friday prices without even leaving my house, or my pajamas, for that matter, including our 50″ plasma television, which will be delivered on December 7th! There was only one item that was available in the stores only at “Door Buster” prices. But I was able to get a similar item at a special price and it saved me the hassle of going out before the crack of dawn.

So thanks to my Thanksgiving morning shopping spree, I am more than halfway done with my Christmas shopping. Just a few more gifts to buy.

I love online shopping! And credit cards*. And free shipping. And special offers. Yippee!

 

*(which will be paid in full but make online shopping such a snap)

Thanksgiving Recap

We had a lovely Thanksgiving celebration with our friends from our homeschool group/church, Phil and Kim, and their two children, Graeme and Lauren and our friend, Tina, and her friend, Nikki.

The adult table:

The kid’s table:

Close up of our place cards that I created on my Cricut Machine:

Although I had prepared most of the food the two days prior to Thanksgiving, Kim helped me with the last minute preparations in the kitchen.

Carl had the important job of carving the turkey. Zack had the almost-as-important job of keeping the turkey warm.

Some of the other guests were in various states of consciousness at this time. And this was even before the turkey was served!

The other couch was a little more awake.

Finally, dinner was served and everyone filled their plates with all the yummy food. We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, corn, rolls, and strawberry jello. And that was after our appetizers of artichoke dip, cheese and crackers and strawberry salsa.

After Carl, Phil and Kim went for a walk and Tina, Nikki and I cleaned up, it was time for some games. We played a fun, new, easy card game that Carl and I and the boys had learned the night before at our friends, the Annala’s house, called “Chase the Ace.” We also played a few rounds of Whoonu.

Our only crisis of the day was watching the coffee pot overflow twice while trying to brew coffee with some new, impenetrable filters.

We enjoyed some pumpkin pie and French Silk Pie with the ground-laden coffee and then it was time to say goodbye to our guests.

We hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving celebration filled with yummy food and lots of friends and/or family. Now let the Christmas season begin!

Thanksgiving Recap

I know that you will all be terribly disappointed but you will have to wait until Monday for my Thanksgiving recap and photos. We enjoyed a lovely day with family and friends. But it’s after 11pm now and I’m too tired to work on a blog post so it will have to wait until this weekend. I hope you all had a fabulous day! Catch up with you all on Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last year, I shared the things that I was thankful for. In reviewing my list, it is much the same this year, except that now I am thankful for Coke Zero instead of Diet Pepsi. So I thought that I would ask the kids for 10 Things that They are Thankful For. This is what they came up with.

Zack

1. My Family
2. My friends
3. My toys
4. My life
5. My house
6. Cars
7. School
8. Television
9. Wii
10. Harry

Anthony

1. Skateboards
2. Snowboards
3. Our house
4. Transportation
5. Food
6. Harry
7. My Family
8. Friends
9. Jesus for dying on the cross
10. My life

Kelly

1. All of my parent’s help, support, concern, etc in my life. Everything from school to living situation! And I’m not just being a suck-up, I really am grateful.
2. My true friends; Kristin, Bridget, and Tristan in particular.
3. My eyesight! There are tons of blind people walking around Minneapolis and it’s always a nice reminder of something most people take for granted.
4. The internet. Not just because of facebook and the like, but it’s also makes school much easier.
5. My education.
6. That said, I’m really thankful for weekends/breaks from school lol. It’s been great having no school on Fridays this semester, too!
7. Baja Sol! way better than Chipotle.
8. My job, for obvious reasons (blah blah blah economy etc). Plus I know a lot of kids my age that don’t want jobs or can’t find them and I think it’s so lame.
9. My car. Even though it’s not the coolest, I’m just happy to have one. And not have to make any payments or anything (see #1)
10. My health, physical and mental.

It seems that one of my children put a little more time and effort into her list .  Thank you Kelly…it’s a great list!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I hope your day is filled with good food and good friends/family! Be blessed.

I Walked Across America!

From August 31st until November 22nd, I virtually walked from Delaware to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a total of 504,800 steps using the Webwalking USA program and as tracked at the blog Walk With Us!. I walked an average of 5,000 steps per day…some days walking around 2,500 steps (if I was lazy and just did my normal walking around the house), some days walking 8,000 steps (if I took a nice 45 minute walk that day).  My all-time high for the day was 13, 763 when we explored the Badlands during our South Dakota vacation. My steps were tracked by a pedometer that I wore on a daily basis.

There were six  (originally 9 of us but 3 of them got lost along the way) of us on our virtual walk and sadly, I was not the first to complete the walk. My sister-in-law Cheryl, who started the walk two weeks later than the rest of us, kicked our butts and finished up her walk a few weeks ago. It’s hard to compete with someone who is young and energetic with a small child at home that keeps her busy! However, I was pleased to finish up second, even after having a week or so break after my surgery. There was another 2 to 3 week period while I continued to recover and I was pushed down the trail in a chair by my BFF, Deb, using her step count each day in place of my lack of walking!

It was a fun experience and it definitely helped keep me motivated to walk on a regular basis as we held each other accountable and needed to report our steps to the blog each day. I plan on continuing to wear my pedometer to track my steps, with a goal of achieving 8,000 steps at least 3-4 times each week. After the New Year, I may walk back across America or maybe walk somewhere more exotic this time…like South America or Australia! Who wants to join me on another walk???

363 Days

On Saturday afternoon, our Small Group from church got together to make sandwiches for the homeless through a great organization called 363.

About 363

Each year, various organizations put together programs for Thanksgiving and Christmas to help feed, clothe and take care of those less fortunate. There is a remarkable amount of time, energy and money that goes into these programs. An honest question, pondered by those who participate is; what happens the other 363 days of the year?

363 was established with the other days in mind. Our starting goal is to help feed 150 homeless people in Minneapolis as many times a year as possible, with the ultimate goal of doing it everyday of the year.

So our small group, looking for a service project for the holidays, decided to make 450 sandwiches for this organization. I was the coordinator and volunteered to do the shopping. The couples that participated shared in the cost.

I purchased 48 loaves of bread,

11 double packs of Turkey lunchmeat, 12 double packs of Ham lunchmeat, 3 large packages of cheese and 500 sandwich bags. I’m grateful for Sam’s Club, where I could buy everything in bulk quite easily and I’m grateful for my SUV to get it all home!

We met at the church, set up 3 long tables and set to work making sandwiches…two pieces of bread, two pieces of meat and one piece of cheese.

Each sandwich needed to be placed in a Ziploc sandwich bag and then the individual sandwich bags put back into the bread bags to keep them all together.

We were able to put all the bagged sandwiches into the church’s freezer until Monday when they will be brought to one of the drop locations.

The whole thing took just about an hour of our time. It was a neat experience and it feels good to know that we will all be making a small difference in the lives of 450 individuals this week.

Thanks to all of our group that participated. I was blessed to serve with you all and thank you for your kind hearts of compassion and generosity.

If you haven’t served those in need recently, why don’t you find a way to help somebody in need this Christmas season. Opportunities abound through church communities and social service organizations. You will be blessed to be a blessing to others!

Date Night Helpful Hints

Helpful Hint #1: Call ahead and make a reservation if you are going to get dressed up (keeping in mind that anything besides jeans is considered dressed up around here) and go out for a fancy dinner even if you are going at 5:30pm and expecting to avoid the dinner crowd. That way you will avoid being told there is an hour and a half wait and have to resort to the T.G.I. Fridays around the corner.

Helpful Hint #2: Make sure you know where the theater is located and maybe print out an actual map instead of just glancing at the directions on the website and thinking you know exactly where you are going when you don’t which causes your spouse to break several traffic laws and arrive at the correct location just moments before the performance began.

Helpful Hint #3: Avoid garlic in your dinner entree. Enough said.

So the need for hints #1 and #2 are totally my fault and I take full responsibility. But after not having a date night for4-5 months, I was out of practice and forgot how to plan ahead. Hint #3 is totally on Carl. Just sayin’.

All-in-all we had a great time though. We enjoyed a nice dinner out and then went to see “The Scarlet Pimpernel” at the Bloomington Civic Theatre. The eldest son of one of the homeschool families in our local support group had the leading role and everybody has been raving about his performance. So we decided to go check it out. He was incredible, as were all the performers, and it was a very impressive production. We plan on making a point to start going to more local theater performances since I love theater, and especially musicals.

And the good news is that since our dinner plans didn’t work out, we get to have another date next weekend. We have a $25 off coupon to Wildfire, the local steak house, that I received at last year’s MN Vikings Women’s Luncheon and it expires at the end of this month so we want to take advantage of that savings. So our reservation is made and we will go on Saturday 6:00pm after catching an afternoon matinee of “The Blind Side“.

Yippee! I have achieved two of my 101 in 1001 Goals with our date night:

25. Go on a date with Carl at least once per month.
26. Go to at least two Theater performances each year.

And in case you were wondering what happened to my monthly accounting of my goals…I got bored. I’m still keeping track of them. I’m just not writing my monthly summary. You were getting tired of reading them anyway. Admit it. I won’t be offended.

Helpful Hint #4: Get free babysitting for your son by bribing your best friends to take him out for dinner with them instead of bringing him home after a play date so that he does not need to be alone while his older brother is at hockey practice. Then your child will be fed and supervised while you are out enjoying your Date Night with your husband . Thanks Deb and Ron! You are the best!

Not Bummed Anymore

In my search for a family to join us for Thanksgiving, I had posted an invitation on our homeschool support group online message board. Our dear friends from church and the family that was the inspiration for us to begin homeschooling in the first place, contacted me today to say that they would love to join us. The husband has been out of town so she could not reply sooner. Yippee!! I am so excited to have such dear friends join us. Now it will feel like Thanksgiving. Bring on the turkey!!

Note to mom: It is our friend Kim and her family. Kim is the woman that met us at the hospital the morning of my surgery to pray with Carl and me and to give me that lovely prayer shawl that I kept over me during my entire hospital stay.

God is good and always knows just what we need and how to provide it. Thank you!

Random Thoughts

• I’m bummed about Thanksgiving. I really dislike holidays with just my family. Not that I don’t love my family or enjoy spending time with them. But it just seems like just another day when it’s just us. I miss the big, wild, crazy family holidays from when we lived in Chicago. I do not like not having any family in Minnesota. So, yeah, I’m bummed that it’s just us and our single friend, Tina, for Thanksgiving.
• I actually finished all 80 of my Christmas cards. I did not think that I would manage it by Thanksgiving. But I did. What did you expect?
• Now I need to come up with some clever Christmas letter idea. I’ve done the Crossword puzzle, Fill-in-the-blank, Alphabet, Numbers, Monthly Summary, Random word collage, photo spread and last year’s powerpoint slideshow. Hmm..what to do this year, what to do.
• Carl and I watched Food, Inc. this week. I’m glad that I started buying organic meat this past year. And now my husband totally supports my decision. Anybody that eats food should watch this movie.
• Our new homeschooling schedule is going well. I love being able to sleep in each morning. I love having a more relaxed atmosphere. I don’t feel like I’m always rushing to get things done now. And Anthony is doing okay on being more independent and getting his assignments done each week. This is what homeschooling is all about!
• I’m kinda bummed about Christmas too. It seems like the end of an era almost. All the kids want one big ticket item each. So that is all that they will be getting. Really, that is all. Not even a few small things. And they all know what they are getting. It seems like the magic and fun and mystery is gone. My shopping sure will be easy this year though.
• Carl and I are finally getting our big, flat-screen television and surround-sound system for Christmas. So it’s just one big present for us also. And no surprises or mystery there either.
• Actually, we already bought the surround-sound system.
• The 50″ plasma flat-screen television is on sale at Best Buy on Black Friday. I’m thinking of going at 5am just for the heck of it.
• You can check out all the Black Friday ads online, you know.
• The rest of Season 5 of LOST is now available on Hulu. I can finally watch the last 11 episodes that I have not seen yet. Then I will be ready to watch Season 6 on our new huge TV starting in January!

That is all. Have a great weekend.

Harry Dog

Although Applie certain people around here aren’t fond of their dogs and would put them on the next plane to Alaska if they could, I love my Harry Dog.

And despite what my family says, he loves me best. He follows me around all day and stays where I stay. When I lay on the couch to watch a movie, he cuddles up next to me for a nap. Every morning around 6am, he jumps into bed and lays down by my side, waiting for me to wake up.

How could you not love this face?

We’ve had Harry since he was a puppy. He’s almost 10 years old. It’s going to be a sad day when Harry isn’t a part of our family anymore. Hopefully that day is a long way off. We love you Harry!