Catch Up

So, it's been a week since I wrote anything of much significance.  I'll try my best to get everything in.  So last Friday night, shortly after I posted my blog in fact, the night got a little exciting although not in a good way.  I was in bed reading and Duncan came in from checking on Calleigh and told me that she felt really hot.  By this time, it was around midnight.  I went in to check on her and she was out of her sleeping bag (yes, she's been sleeping in her sleeping bag and on the cot since we bought the cot last week) and lying haphazardly on her crib bed.  I felt her and she did feel very warm and she started talking to me about how hot she was.  I quickly changed her into cooler pajamas and brought her cot into our room.  Naturally, she quickly made her way into our bed from the cot. She still felt really warm so we gave her some Tylenol.  But then, a few minutes later, she stated that her belly hurt.  This is not an abnormal statement on her part since usually that proceeds her having to use the facilities.  However, about two minutes later, she starts vomiting in our bed.  How exciting!  Duncan got her to the sink in time for the rest of it.  After a big clean up and Calleigh talking repeatedly about how she threw up, why she threw up, and everything else you ever wanted to talk about regarding throwing up, we finally hunkered down for what ended up being an uneventful night sleep.  In the morning, she was as fine as could be.  No fever and the belly felt fine.  So who knows.  Maybe it was just something she ate.

I'm glad she was fine because we had a picnic planned after church with the Isidro's and Bergherm's.  We went to Lotus Park, which isn't too far from the church, and it's a park we had never been to.  The only downside was that you had to take a shuttle to get in since they don't allow you to park in there on the weekends.  But we managed to get it all in without too much trouble.  The park has a little of picnic tables right next to a vast playground so it was the ideal situation.  The kids could all play while we prepared food and then we could eat in relative peace.  None of the kids really seemed to eat much but I suppose that's to be expected when there are so many distractions.  The adults on the other hand...we stuffed ourselves.  We had way to much food and barely seemed to make a dent in it.  We ended up running into Duncan's old boss, Richard, and his wife, as we were eating and they stopped to chat with us for about 10 - 15 minutes.  It was nice to see them as Richard has always been one of our favorite people to talk to.

Saturday night Duncan and I had an evening on the town for a pre-birthday celebration for Duncan.  Elaine and Ron were there to babysit, obviously.  Since we LOVED Hot Olives so much from my birthday we decided to go back and I was once again able to get a great deal on a gift card, paying $3 for a $25 one.  Not only that but a deal on movie tickets had just popped up the day before and so we paid $9 for two movies tickets (I'm so out of the loop on movie prices these days since I very rarely go but even I could determine this was a good deal.).  Duncan selected "The Fighter" as his movie preference.  We enjoyed it but it definitely wan't my cup of tea despite the Boston setting.  But, I was happy to go since it made Duncan happy :)  And, really, who could complain when you have a little time with just the two of you?

Let's see....what else happened over the weekend?  Well, Sunday we used our annual pass to the Science Center for the last time as it expired on Monday.  They were having the annual Festival of Chocolate.  They have some kid activities there and then oodles of booths set up with various vendors displaying their chocolate wares.  We got a few chocolate treats along the way which were pretty tasty.  Calleigh and Aubree both enjoyed a marshmallow dipped in some sort of chocolate sauce.  Yuck!  Afterwards, we got home for a quick lunch and then on to nap time.  As I mentioned on Wednesday night, Sunday turned out to be the only day that Calleigh did not take a nap.  Instead, we went for our CVS shopping trip.  Maybe that will become our "thing."  After Aubree and Duncan's nap (lucky dogs), we hit up Babies R Us to pick up a few gifts for someone at Duncan's work who is having a baby boy in April.  Goodness, it's SO hard to buy brand new stuff when you see the exact same stuff at yard sales for 90% off the price.  Of course, I wouldn't give someone I didn't know really well any used stuff so I forced myself to just buy things.  Some of the items were binkies which made me feel better because I'm pretty sure I draw the line at using used binkies...although I've seen many of them for sale at yard sales.  We made a sweep of the store and I was excited to see that there are a few new things out there on the market in the two years since I pretty much last looked.  Obviously I won't be buying them there though!

Decorating a chocolate lollipop with an edible ink marker.

By some miracle, she didn't end up covered with chocolate.

Monday we went down to the outlets to try and get Duncan a birthday present at Banana Republic.  In the end, I was kicking myself because I just bought gift cards and I could have gotten those anywhere.  At least I got some exercise while pushing that darn double stroller all around the place.  The stroller itself isn't that heavy but there's probably 65 pounds of toddler weight in it now and it's getting more cumbersome to push.

Tuesday was Duncan's birthday or as I unaffectionately like to refer to it as, Aubree's MAJOR grumpy day.  I don't know what it was but something was just off for her that day.  She woke up and was completely silent for like the first hour of the day, barely saying a word through breakfast.  In hindsight, I wish she would have just kept up the silent treatment.  Throughout the rest of the day, she cried or was crabby at various times, although thankfully was fairly decent during story time.  By the time it was five o'clock and I stupidly decided to make Duncan cake from scratch, she was in full grumpy/crabby/cranky/you name it mode.  Lesson learned.  Don't make a cake from scratch when you have a 21-month old who intends to cry the ENTIRE time.  Thank goodness I had the Kitchenaid or I'm sure it would have taken me twice as long.  I put some homemade frosting on the cake and I had to tell them to please excuse the sugar lumps because I didn't have time to smooth it out while mixing (that part was by hand).  That's just the way it is with kids.  Thankfully, the cake was still pretty edible and as Duncan declared over the last few days, it actually may be better than brownie delight when you put the delight whip cream on it (we had a lot of whip cream leftover from when I made brownie delight for the picnic).  At any rate, it was still a nice birthday celebration.  Duncan's parents came over for supper and then we had the cake.  Russ has been working the late shift or he would have come over as well.

As I've mentioned before, Calleigh has a fear of birthday candles.  But she practiced blowing out a candle this week while I held it my hand.  The big test was helping Daddy blow out his.  She did so with flying colors so I think we're good....until I heard Aubree say "I scary of candles."  Darn.  The girls share a cake.

Wednesday we went to Red Bug Lake Park for another installment of "Puppets in the Park" although Calleigh particularly was very disappointed as there was no actual puppet show this time.  There were some stuffed animals that perhaps could have been called puppets.  They were props for a particular story and Miss Joanne was looking for volunteers to help with the animals and Calleigh rushed right up. She was in charge of the mule and seemed to be pleased with her assigned animal.  Afterwards, the girls ran around a bit more and then we headed to the restroom before leaving.  As we were coming out, we heard two really loud booms but then I remembered that the space shuttle was landing right around then so sure enough, those were the sonic booms.  The girls were intrigued by this and in fact, Aubree has talked over and over again about the boom. Kids just kill me how they'll talk about the same thing an endless amount of times whether it's a boom, an English muffin that knocked out a tooth, or Grandma getting injured on her bike (this was months ago but every time Aubree sees a bike, she brings it up).  After the playround, I figured I had earned a trip to Walgreen's and Winn Dixie.  Yes, I think I may be adding another store to my repertoire.  I won't be going there for much but when you can get toilet bowl cleaner for just a few cents, I figured it was worth the trip.  Plus, they have a bunch of coupons there that I can use at Publix.  Poor Calleigh and Aubree.  They're going to get sick of all these stores and the coupons.  But really, I think it's good training for them to learn how to be frugal.  They already know all about coupons and how we don't buy things without them (well, at least many things without them.  Calleigh wanted a particular fruit cup at Walmart the other day and I told her "No, I don't have a coupon for that."  She seemed to accept that as just the way it is.)

Thursday is normally Walmart day but it was so rainy and dreary out, I decided it was time to hit the mall instead.  We hadn't been in a very long time and plus, I was itching to check out Motherhood Maternity.  I did find a long sleeve dress that was on clearance (that I can wear in Maine in a few weeks) so I was happy about that.  There's a big dressing room there so we were able to just wheel the double right in and shut the door. Lots of privacy. Calleigh took that as an opportunity to try on the big belly attachment they had (the "belly" is for you to use while trying stuff on in case you're belly isn't that big yet).  Afterwards, we hit the playground for a nice long play time.  For some reason, Calleigh gravitated to the boys this time and after a bit, she yelled over to me from where she was "I have boy friends today."  I knew what she meant of course, but it's still funny to hear her say "boyfriends."  I figured she would go down for her nap from all the play time and she did but not before she whispered down the stairs to me, this was about 45 minutes after she went to her room, "I peed in the pool at Lindsey's party."  Why that had come into her brain at that particular moment, I have no idea.  So if you were in the pool at Lindsey's party and you are reading this, my apologies.  But that's pretty much to be expected, right?  Incidentally, we did go to Walmart after nap time but I'm happy to report, we're spending less and less there so it was a very quick trip.

One of Calleigh's "boy friends" who followed her all over the place. Actually they were the same size and both wearing blue so they looked like twins.

Yay, we're finally to today.  Last night I was up pretty late getting my GPS programmed for the yard sales and then printing out coupons and planning my Publix attack for later in the day.  By the time I hit the sheets, it was 12:30 but my mind couldn't even shut down because I just kept thinking about things.  But, I was wide awake at 7:15 and ready to go.  It suddenly occurred to me that I needed to get a move on it because there was a yard sale that was advertising baby clothes for 5/$1.  I didn't know if they were boys or girls but it started at 8:00 and I didn't want to end up with leftovers. So I was all dressed and ready to go by 7:20 and when Duncan woke up a few minutes later, he almost bounded out of bed thinking it was way later than it was.  He joked as to whether the girls were already in the car!  Not quite but I was able to get them dressed and fed and out the door by about 8:30.  We got to the sale and jackpot!  It was baby boy stuff and it really was 5/$1 which is an excellent, excellent deal.  And it wasn't junk either.  The only drawback was that it was about 50 degrees or so and Calleigh kept complaining she was freezing (while at the same time, Aubree had taken off her sweatshirt and wouldn't put it back on) and there wasn't much to the distract them.  So I had to move VERY quickly through the bins.  I ended up with 45 pieces for $9 (for those who are mathematically challenged) and was very pleased but I'm sure I could have gotten a lot more had I not had the girls with me.  After that, we picked up Elaine for the rest of the morning but the rest of the day only produced a few odds and ends.  We ate lunch at their house and then it as on to blessed nap time (for them.  I looked longingly at the bed, believe me, but duty called).

Duncan got home around 5:15 and then it was time for me to pop over to Publix.  The reason he got home so late was, well, if you pay attention to technology news you'll know what happened today.  Nothing came of his little outing however.  Anyway, I needed him to watch the girls because I had a giant stack of coupons and I didn't want them in tow. Publix was having another awesome deal in that you could buy a $50 gas gift card you get $10 off your groceries (for every $25 you spent on groceries)  So when all was said and done I paid....drumroll please....a negative $5.40 for $121 worth of groceries.  That's right folks.  They basically had to PAY ME to take the groceries.  I paid out of pocket obviously for the gift cards but the end result was my paying $144 for $150 of gift cards plus I got the $121 of groceries all for free.  So yes, staying up until 12:30 the night before was definitely worth it.  I'm going back on Sunday for more.  I mean, who doesn't need gas, right???  You can't go wrong.

Wait, how did that picture get in here????  Well, since it's here, if you're in the market for an iPad (the original), let me know.  Ha!

I think that wraps up our week.  Oh, the reason I've been busy is that I started taking my on-line driver's remedial school, or whatever you want to call it, from my accident.  I've also had some work for an upcoming meeting and then obviously, I've had some couponing stuff.  It's good to be busy I guess :)

Have a Happy Sabbath!