Big weekend busted

I had high hopes to make it up to Omaha for a haircut tomorrow, but with the snow and ice coming, I guess I'm grounded. Maybe if I get desperate, I'll skate to the mall and get one! It's pretty silly to drive to Omaha for a trim, but it's a good excuse to see my friend Shannon whom I only see when I go seeking a haircut!
Jeff has decided to try and keep me from having my quarterly breakdown where I lament that I have no friends to hang out with for 'me' time. I get pretty strange when I don't get some 'me' time these days. Last time it was a bawling crisis over missing a craft show. Silly but true. Maybe if it looks drivable tomorrow afternoon I could convince a friend to go to the vineyard with me.
I'm still waiting for the proofs for the picture we are getting through daycare. Unless they are pretty fantastic, I'll probably stick with the photo places at the mall that get me my pictures asap. I'm in that instant gratification mode!
I was checking out one of my cousins' blogs and saw that she loves The Bing Crosby Christmas movies as much as I do. Maybe she should come down and we could watch movies and drink cocoa and do some mommy crafty stuff. I've always wanted to have a party with friend and invite them to bring a bunch of old cards: birthday, wedding, holiday or whatever, and have a card making party.We could make our own 'card boxes' full of standard cards. All those stamping sell-at-home people promote card making parties to sell products, but by the time I finish one of those fancy stamps,get it cut, and trimmed and backed and,well, whatever, I'm out of time!
I was given two boxes of beautiful buttons from my Grams and all I can think of is getting them onto or into a pretty craft! I've also been dying to cut up some of my wedding cards that were too pretty to part with and remake them into original cards. Anyone up for that? I think if all the cousins got together, we could have a great time with old movies, wine and cheese, and crafts! We could all make our own card boxes so that you would have your own stock of cards to go to - not to mention pretty cards cost about 4-6 bucks a pop these days! Oh I'm getting excited! Maybe sometime in Jan or Feb when it slows down and we have all those pretty Christmas cards that seem to do little other than gather dust until they get put in the circular file.
And geez, I have a short tote full of square cut fabric scraps of every shape, style and texture. We had to get swatches for costume class one year and I thought all the fabrics were so neat, I started grabing lots for myself! And ribbon!!! I'm a big collector of cheap ribbon! Oh my gosh this could be so fun! I had better stop typing about it, I'm rambling!

Motivated now!

My brain is on overdrive today. I stated out trying to get the Christmas tree finished, Hubs put it up Tuesday, but the cat is too attracted to it when I'm rustling around changing light bulbs. I tried some cat repellant spray from the pet store on it, but it doesn't seem to work. Next, I thought I would do some work, but I keep forgetting that I don't have the correct program on my computer to do it, so scrap that and I'm back to writing again. I started to writing timeline style for my mushy romance novel, and suddenly I started another book. It seems that books sell better in pairs or trilogies, so maybe this is a good thing. I've got my hands full and I seem to have matched a female cook with a male doctor. Sound plain Jane, but I'm thinking they meet in the delivery room when he has to stand in for her best friends regular doctor. Love through labor . . .why not?
Alaina had a good time at the sitters last night. I was worried when she didn't want me to even set her off of my lap. I kind of snuck out while they distracted her and worried that she might panic worse not seeing me leave after I left. The sitters called ten minuted after I took off and left the message to not hurry back. She was having too much fun to even notice I was gone! I was sad, but glad that she did alright.

Busy Week

I'm trying to get a handle on Christmas shopping, but am feeling a bit like Sisyphus. The closer I get the farther away it seems. IT leeks like the family schedule will be Sat or Sun before Christmas will find us with the inlaws, Monday we will move to my parents and to the Shafer Christmas eve, and then Brett and Angie are coming through town Christmas morning for a sibling get together. I'm excited! now I just need to start prodding the siblings to get their lists emailed out, of course this makes me a hypocrite, since mine isn't out yet, but hey, I'm trying!
the house is still on hold, and we're waiting on the bid for the contractors to boost the beams in the ceiling of our room still. Hopefully it comes out semi cheap. I hope Jeff doesn't have to tackle it himself. And once that's done, we'll have a drywalling party. Or a staining party. Who wants to come? Well, I'm sure there's a volunteer to babysit at least!
My manager is in from cinti this week, so I'm in 16 hours of training for a new product to manage time and people. Since he's in from out of town, we're going out to eat with the team at Skeeter Barnes tonight, Alaina is going to go over to Faye and Larry's tonight. I'll enjoy the chance to eat out and come home clean.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Its snowing! Which I will love when I get back to my parents house! Because then I don't have to drive in it of course. I'm hoping that Alaina's gets to feeling a little better. She's been coughing and she woke up screaming twice last night. Poor dear. They should make that sound into an alarm clock noise. Mom's would never sleep in again. Actually since I notoriously hit the snooze, maybe I woud learn to sleep a little more everytime she stirs.
Anywho . . .
I got all anbitious and decided that I was going to fix the dripping sink in the bathroom the other day. Well, I reached down to turn off the water and the shut off valve was wet. hmmmm. When I turned the valve off, it started leaking even more. Yikes! I shut it all the way off and it only drips about once every two minutes, but it is still going to be a problem. So now we have no hot water in the bathroom sink, thank you very much. Oops. Of course I thought to myself, Why don't I see if I can still fix the leak huh? I should have quite while I was still only a little behind. Apparently the only thing keeping the annoying dripping sink form turning into a terrible leak was me not touching it. The rubber gaskets inside the handle are completely toast, so I could put humpty together again, without a trip to the hardware store. Rats! So there is still no hot water in the bathroom sink, and I messed up the previously leaky sink and turned it into a geiser. By the way, this is typed with a smile on my face. I'm going to start researching into replacing the shut off valve myself! (But I'll get my husband to supervise!)

"So?"

Busy weekend with Stacey, we did some holiday shopping and got our Shafer Grab bag gifts! She found the most perfect item at Sonata, this great little store by NWU. its kind of a ritzier country cottage style place. We found mine across the street at a store who's name I forget. I had to have Stacey help pick mine out, she always gets the best items. I hope I get hers in the grab bag, ha ha! Anyway, the holiday scramble has started for me. Trying to think of ideas and such for Nana and Papa, unsure of if I'm suppose to get something big for Alaina or not, etc etc. I hope we figure out where the families want to eat for Christmas soon. I get panicky about getting things preplanned for Alaina!
On friday Alaina was role playing her teenage years for me at the supper table. She wanted some teddy grahams that she could see in the kitchen from her table and I told her she hadn't finished her food that was on the table. She lifted her arms to the side and shrugged and said, "So?" I about passed out from trying not to giggle at her. The little goof.

Countdown to Turkeytown-edited

I can't wait for Thanksgiving! Jeff and I, mostly me I suppose, debated and decided to head to his family's thanksgiving dinner this year. I think we've finally started the 'every other year phase' for our family get togethers. I don't like having to wait to see what time of day the holidays are, I just want to plan on one side, and add in others, if the stars align. Jeff has three cousins that live out of state that are coming back with their families for the holiday. Two of his cousins are military and I have only met them once or twice. I can't even remember when was the first time I met them, but I remember feeling like I was being 'roasted' on a comedy special. It was like being in jr high with older brothers all over again!
Well, off to a meeting! Everyone have a great day!
Part 2
I decided to hop back on and add a little more later today. Stacey is back in town today, yay! She says she'll be really busy and may not see me . . boo! Just kidding. I'm excited she's back and hope that she has a good time staying with us! The upstairs is getting colder everyday, but I get to see her more if she has to come to my house to sleep!
We had pictures taken of Alaina at daycare yesterday morning and I hope they get us the proofs to look at today. I'm anxious to get a mroe recent photo of her for all the family. That is they are probably anxious, and I like to beat them to the punch! Wallets for everyone and a few bigger ones for the great g-mas, grandparents and probably Aunt Stacey as well. (I can't remember what the photo packages were!)
The time is just about here for Christmas shopping and my husband asked me this week. Do you think we can do most of our shopping online? I wish! Alaina has started this neat little trick of screaming whenever I try to push the stroller into a store in the mall. Its great for keeping me from buying impulse stuff, but it won't be so funny when we need to get gifts! Inconceivable!

I'm posting this early, because I don't know if Iwill have time to get it tomorrow.

The Top Ten things Nana does better than Mommy
By Alaina
10 Puts me to bed- I sleep an hour longer for naps when Nana puts me down.
9 Gives me a bath- Nana makes it fun! Mommy need to get a tutor!
8 Feeds Me - "She ate what?" Mommy said
7 Plays - Nana always knows the best way to plaY!
6 Q and A - Nana asks me questions I know the answer to before mommy does. Of course I know what a cow says, and where my tummy is, and where Ozzie is!
5 Feeds me - "She ate how much?" Mommy said. Silly mommy.
4 Does my hair - I scream when Mommy even looks at my brush at home!
3 Wipes my nose - Mommy never stood a chance, hee hee.
2 Clips my nails - Mommy can try, but she's gather more tears than clippings quicker than I can yell for daddy!
1 Gives hugs! - Nana hugs just right!
Happy Birthday Nana!