A Long Weekend

It's a lazy Sunday morning here.  Kloe and Derrick are playing Mario Brothers (both yelling intermittently at the screen and each other), and I am laying here in my new bathrobe (Derrick says it looks like baby seal skin... excellent) rereading my old blogs and realizing it is time to get back on the horse of writing in here.  Derrin is at a sleepover in Dixon with his friend Lewie's house (Derrick insists on pulling my socks off as I write... apparently interrupting me while I write helps his Mario game...).

It was Thanksgiving this Thursday, so we had a four day weekend from work and five day weekend from school.  We managed to spend a lot of time with various friends, but still had some down time together at home.

Our Long Weekend Included

• The kids spent Wednesday geocaching with the Taylors.  All reports from them indicate it was an awesome day.  Derrin especially loves geocaching, which doesn't surprise me.  I had to work that day, but that night I went to Lyndsay's house for an all-girl 'spa night'.  I had imagined that our 'spa night' would include drinking some wine in her hot tub and talking until the wee hours of the night, which sounded awesome to me.  Instead, Lyndsay created an amazing spa atmosphere in her house with soft music, candles, snacks, and wine, and then had us all get into our robes while she sat out tubs of hot water with bathsalts for us to soak our feet in.  She did this for all eight of us, while bringing sugar scrubs and glasses of wine and hot towels to wrap our legs in. After we were all soft and scrubbed, we sat around her table and painted finger and toe nails while having some serious girl talk.  It was a really great night.  Lyndsay is a generous and amazing person... I learned a serious lesson on giving that night.  

• Thursday morning I woke up early, and met Shannon at body pump.  Usually the class is insanely full on holiday mornings, but it wasn't as crazy full this time.  Later that day, the three Sturgill kids came over to hang out (they were visiting from Washington this weekend), and they ended up playing outside and in their rooms most of that day.  Amanda came over to visit a bit before taking Jalen and Lilly and Audrey stayed to spend the night with Kloe.  

• Friday.... aw, Black Friday.  Normally, I shun all shopping on Black Friday.  As an opportunity to hang out with the girls (as in Shannon and Lyndsay and her friend Cassandra), I actually ventured out for this Black Friday.  We didn't meet until ten, so most of the crazy door busters were over, and therefore most of the crazy crowds were gone.  We hit Murdock's (bought a skiing hat), Goodwill (Weird, right?  But everything was 50% off, and I bought a bunch of summer dresses and wine glasses and still came in under $30), then we hit Huhot's for lunch, and we had just ventured into the mall when I decided to call to find out what time we needed to show up for our dinner plans at Steve and Sabrina's.  Turned out that our early dinner had changed into late lunch, and somehow we'd fallen through the cracks of dinner time awareness.  While I had assumed I would have until around 4 or 5 to get there, it turned out that we were supposed to be there at 1 and everyone else was already there.  After a mild heart attack and some deep breathing exercises, I called Derrick to tell him Kloe's sleepover needed to end early and Audrey needed a ride back to her folks, and then I gathered my girls from the four corners of the mall and gave them all a ride back to Murdock's where we'd left their cars.  

• The dinner/game night resulted in a lot of fun, regardless of our tardiness.  It was full of lots of my favorite people (Diefenbachs, Leeflangs, McArthurs), good food and drinks, and happy atmosphere.  We played poker (I lost the first game, but then won a later game- important to note that detail...), and also Liar's Dice.  The little girls (the McArthur girls, Alana, and Kloe) all spent the night with Darby, and by Kloe's account no one went to sleep until around 4 in the morning. Party Animals.

• On Saturday, Derrin went over to Lewie's house after service, and we picked up a very tired Miss Kloe.  Derrick wasn't feeling well, so we tucked ourselves in for the rest of the day/night, and did very little.  It felt great.

•  I started writing this Sunday morning (it is now Monday afternoon).  Derrick pestered me into getting off of the couch mid-blog, and going on a walk with him, Kloe and Jessy.  It is getting windy and damp out there, but we had a nice time.  Kloe started feeling icky later that afternoon, so I stayed home from meeting with her.

• And now it is Monday.  The long weekend is over.  This was one of those fairly busy/crazy weekends where even though we had a lot of fun, the normal quiet routine of regular life wasn't all together an unacceptable reality.

And that's about it for the weekend rundown.  This week is supposed to get super cold.  Sounds like real winter is just around the corner.  *sigh*  I guess it was bound to get here eventually.