Veterans' Day Holiday--Nov. 10, 2006

Today the kids didn't have school because of Veterans' Day so we got up later than usual and kind of lazed around in the morning. I needed to go grocery shopping and wanted the girls to clean up the house because tomorrow is the Veterans' Day Parade and they won't be home in the morning and won't feel like doing anything in the afternoon because they will be so tired. Hopefully my mom will get some good Parade pictures and I can post them later.

I went to the bank to get money from the ATM for Tim to pay some of our workers, Trader Joe's and Winco (our grocery store) and finished shopping for most of the week and didn't get home until 3:30pm. Alyssa wanted to have some friends over to play Karaoke Revolution, but I had told her she couldn't until I inspected her room and her cleaning job. She wasn't happy because I got home so late, but life goes on. They got to come over later, but then couldn't stay long because she had to work at 6pm. They stayed until about 5:30 and I got some more laundry done and everything ready for bill paying. I didn't actually get to paying the bills because of lack of time, but I only have a few to pay this week. It takes me a little longer right now because of sorting through the "house building" bills. We have been charging absolutely everything on credit cards so we can get airline miles for them so I have to sort through what is "house building" related and what is regular expenditure related. We spent A LOT of money on the house this month with everything we bought off ebay for the bathrooms, etc. We are thinking we might want to take a trip to Italy next year to visit some good friends who are running a cycle tour business over there and I think we need to do some research for decorating the house. It is "Italian Villa" style, you know.

After I took Alyssa to work (she works at a local ice cream place) I came home and we fixed dinner. I say "we" because the girls did help make the salad and set the table before I got home and Tim sauteed the mushrooms and cooked the steaks. We found these inexpensive steaks at Winco that come in a family pack. They are petite sirloin steaks and are not too bad...not filet mignon, mind you, but good for everyday food. Tim was raised in the meat business as his dad owned a meat market until the time we met and Tim had worked there since he was seven years old. He is really good at cooking steak so that is always his job.

After dinner we tried to sit down and watch "Cars", but I fell asleep a few minutes into it and Tim fell asleep not much after that. I am not sure why I was so tired, I didn't do a lot out of the ordinary yesterday and it was only about 8:30, but I was. I did wake up at about 9pm to go get Alyssa from work. I can't wait until she has her driver's license and can get herself to and from work...especially on the nights she works until closing. Last night wasn't so bad, but on weekends they close at 10:30 and then I have to wait for her to call me when they are about finished cleaning up.

Last night (I am posting this on Saturday morning) the wind blew horribly most of the night. They had put up some columns at the house that are going to have a trellis on them when they finish them and Tim and I were so afraid they had blown down. He left early this morning to go over to the house and see how everything was because the guys are coming today to lay pavers (they prepped everything yesterday) and these columns are right where they are going to start them. He just called and said nothing had blown down. Praise the Lord!

Well, this morning I am off to our rehearsal for the Christmas Musical. It is from 9-12n and this is the first time we have run through the whole thing with the choir and the drama portions together. I am excited to see how it is going to turn out. Our choir director wrote the drama portion of it and picked Christmas songs from other musicals we have done as well as other random songs that go with the drama. It is going to be fun.