Stuff!

Well, my husband must really love me, is all I can say. This week, I'm out 4 nights. Sunday I had choir practice, Monday I had book club, tonight I am going to see the Harlem Globetrotters with the Heplers, and tomorrow I am going up to see my friend Debbie from DBVI for dinner. He has been so, so patient and taken such good care of Leah while I've been sowing my wild oats. Although, I will say, we had a little incident on Sunday that I thought was pretty hilarious.

I came home from choir practice, and he says to me, "Susan, Leah threw up on her shirt." I said, "Oh really? What did you do?" "I washed it off with a washcloth, but then it was wet, so I just took it off her and put her to bed. I covered her up nice." "Yeah, but what is she wearing? Did you put PJ's on her?" "No, I don't know how, I just put her to bed and covered her up." I went upstairs, and sure enough, there was Leah, sound asleep wearing nothing but her pants and socks. I turned the heat up a bit just in case it got cool, and let it go. But I thought it was hilarious and so new-dadish!

My in-laws stopped in for a quick overnight on Monday on their way home from Florida. It sounded as if Florida was a bit of a bust for them this year--much cooler temperatures than usual. Still, I'm sure they had their usual good time, and it was real nice to see them an extra visit, even if I was gone for most of it. Book club was a lot of fun, although it was awfully strange without Judy there for the first time in 5 1/2 years. I have heard through the grapevine that this may be a permanent state of affairs, so perhaps it'll be something I have to get used to, but I haven't heard anything about that as yet. We were hosted by Maggie at her house, and it was her book that we discussed, but unfortunately she got a call right as we kicked off and had to leave because her daughter had a little fall. It was great that she trusted all of us to be in her home without her, and fortunately she got good news about little Natalie--no broken bones! We did clean up after ourselves and got a nice note from her yesterday, so it reminded me again of what a family the club has become. Everyone really is there for you when you need them.

Yesterday I was feeling a little blue, so I texted Cindy and Wendy to see if they wanted to have lunch with me (Manda, do you text? If so, I need your number!). Cindy replied that I could come on over to her place, so we made plans to have lunch at Chick-Fil-A and then I would go to her house for a Cricut tutorial. Just as we left Chick-Fil-A, my phone buzzed and it was Wendy! She said she was free for lunch tomorrow (which is now today) and did I want to meet her at 12:30 at Chick-Fil-A. Hahaha Good thing they like us in there!!! So we are dining at CFA this afternoon. They have a wonderful greeter/drink refiller/hostess in there named Deborah and as we were leaving, I said to her, "See you next time!" Little did I know next time is 24 hours later!

Last night we had dinner with the Heplers at Chilis. I had to get my Globetrotters ticket from them and will meet them up north in Stafford today. The game is at North Stafford High, and since I have been to Stafford High for basket bingo and Colonial Forge for choir practice, I think I'll have covered the local high schools now and should know where all of them are.

LOST last night was amazing--not quite as good an episode as last week, but awfully good nonetheless. We really are getting down to the end, only 10 episodes to go, and they really are starting to make sense of the whole thing, even though there are still many unanswered questions. I am enjoying the hell out of it, and will be sad when it is over, but at least I have my DVD's and I can go back through and re-watch the entire thing from start to finish to see what I've missed and what makes sense now in light of later episodes, etc. I haven't kept up with Project Runway as much this season. I think last season was such a bitter disappointment, and this season I just don't seem to care. Isn't that awful? I was such a fan. And this season has been so much better than last season, I feel kind of guilty for not watching! I read the Project Rungay blogs to see who wins and loses, and maybe I'll catch up eventually, but just haven't felt like it lately. I also haven't felt like staying up to watch Hoarders, but at least I've been catching up with that on A&E's site.

For anyone who has asked, no, we still have not heard anything about our exchange student. We are just waiting to hear if the school will accept her. We were hoping to hear by the end of January, but then with all the snows in early February, we still haven't heard anything and here it is March! We would love to get in touch with her and start getting to know her a bit better, but I guess we just have to be patient and let things take their course.

In the meantime, we've decided to do some flipflopping of our house if we are able to. We are going to move the home office downstairs into the basement and make Mike's office upstairs into the extra bedroom. This makes sense for a number of reasons: 1. Caroline will have a closet! 2. When the baby wakes up at 6:00am and wants to play, I can take her downstairs and not have to worry about waking up a slumbering teen! 3. The guestroom is a bit larger than the upstairs room, so I could put up a desk for my new scrapbooking hobby! 4. Mike can go use the computers and radios as much as he wants at any time of the day or night without having to use his headphones or worrying about disturbing anyone. 5. At night when we are all doing our own thing, we will still be on the same floor and easily accessible to one another without having to holler up and down the stairs. 6. Our upstairs floors are really creaky and it won't keep anyone up any more if they are trying to sleep in the spare room if someone's moving upstairs and creaking around.

The two questions that will hold this operation up are: 1. can we get that room wired for ETHERNET and 2. can we get his radio antennas wired into that room. He's got a buddy from the ham club coming over to have a look, and then we'll ask our friend about the computer wiring. He could go back to using wireless, but I've been informed he does not want to do that.

Once we find out if it's possible to do this, I'll have to go on a marathon painting binge, since I'm sure Michael doesn't want a pink striped office. It was a lot of work and I enjoyed it and loved the stripes, but I think something a little more subdued will probably be better for a man cave with a wife-corner. I will probably also repaint the office, but maybe not. The color does match all the bedding we already have, so I may just leave it for now and if Caroline doesn't like it, she can help me repaint it. If anyone wants to help paint or move furniture, we'll pay in pizza, beer, or whatever else floats your boat!

We are excited that Mike and Lesley's niece is moving to DC this summer, so even though it's not Mike and Lesley, it's the next best thing :-) She is coming to stay at the Cookie Jar this April and I'm going to take her apartment hunting while she's here so she can get off to a good start when she makes the move in June. She is a great gal and of course we hope this will be an even bigger incentive for Mike and Lesley to move on up here too!!! :-) Damn the housing market is all! But I know they cannnot resist Leah's siren song, so I have a funny feeling they'll come on up sometime sooner rather than later, as Lesley said :-) Jennifer and I have been swapping emails back and forth to figure out a game plan, and we have just over a month to figure out what we want to do, so I know it will be great. I'm of course going to steer her towards living on the Virginia side of things, because we know how those Maryland types are. Haha!

As for Weight Watchers, well, it seems like I get going and then I get off track. I really did great my first week back, down 4.2 pounds, and then BANG! The snow storm hit and we sat around and ate brownies and cake and did puzzles and read books and stuff. Then the storm was over, and we went to Greensboro and enjoyed ourselves. Then we got back and I just couldn't face it the first week, and that week turned into two, turned into 3. I know it is something I need to do, I have made concrete goals for myself and I want the results, I just have to get into a mindset of where it's going to happen. I remember where it all went terribly wrong--we were up in Plattsburgh when my dad first had the attack and we went to the store, and I thought, "F*** this, I'm getting some Doritos." It's all been downhill from there. I know I can, and I know I will, it's just a matter of when! :-)

As for FlyLady, everything is just great! I do a quick clean every day, and my in-laws were SO impressed when they walked in Monday. They were like, "you have done a lot of work around here!" Between that and Michael's "It's a whole new Susan!" campaign, I guess I was a real slob before :-) But I'm happy with how things look and how easy it is to maintain. If I could just get Leah to pick up her toys...

I guess that's about all the news that's fit to print from Fredericksburg. I am very nearly ready to break out my Cricut and get scrapping, just need to go get some pictures printed off at Walmart and then I'm going to town. I'm so excited. I'll post some pictures of what I create. I got a couple of extra cartridges at Joann's yesterday since they are 50% off right now, so I can use different fonts, etc. on the book. Cindy gave me a great tutorial yesterday, so I'm feeling pretty confident I'll be ready to scrap in no time!

Hope everyone else is doing just dandy :-) Drop me a line, update your own blog, let me know what's going on!