Dec. 11-15, 2006

This week things have calmed down a bit. Tim and Nick stayed at the loft Sunday night so they wouldn't be too tired to drive home. They left for home at about 7am.
The girls have had to be at school at 6:45am all week so I took them early and went to the gym. Except Thursday, Sammy went to a friend of ours' house Wednesday night and stayed the night to help her clean up and decorate (and earn some money) because she was having her Christmas on Friday. I had to get Tara up at 6:30am to go to take them and then we came home. For those who don't know, Tara is not a morning person and was not too happy. Childcare at the gym doesn't start until 8am and I couldn't take her then because I had Bible Study. School was not super productive this week as Sammy was gone helping Thursday and Friday and Alyssa had extra long practices for drill team as they have a Drill Meet Saturday. We did get a lot of the basics done, however and Alyssa is reading Faust this week and really likes it! Go figure! I didn't know if she would care for it, but she told me she thinks it is really good.

I received my ornaments this week and they are so cute. Three pewter snowflakes and a Santa Moose in a canoe from Kathy in Washington.

I also FINALLY took the car in for an estimate from my meeting with the tree stump. Our insurance had told us that if it was less than $750, it would not affect our insurance rates...good thing because we are hoping Alyssa will have her license at the end of this month and that WILL raise our rates. I told the estimator this and he gave me an estimate of....drum roll, please...$647.50. Tim was very happy with me as he was not thrilled with our insurance going up. We still have to pay the deductible, but it will all be okay. Now I have to wait for the parts to come in to get it fixed.

Thursday Tim informed me that we were having some friends over to watch the 49ers play. He thought I had choir and so invited them. We had this week off so I got some "football food" at the store and was home. The game was on NFL network and in High-Definition and this friend doesn't have either so he asked if he could come over. He is a fireman with Tim and also has season tickets so tailgates with us at the games. We have a ton of food left so I guess my menu will be changing this week and we will be eating leftovers.

We continue to read Jotham's Journey every night for advent...I am determined to finish it this year. We have been really bad in years past and not completed these books. I do have Friday night to catch up on today because we missed reading (see below for reason), but we can catch up just one night.

Friday night we had most of the girls spend the night here so they could get up together and get ready for the drill meet. This meant 12 or so girls spending the night all over my house. It was fun, though. They watched movies and ate. Tim was working so Tara slept with me and we went to bed at about 10pm. I told the girls they needed to settle down at 11pm or so because they had to get up at 4:30am so all of them could get ready and leave by 6am. I woke up right after they left (or so Sammy told me) and have cleaned up some, but I have a lot more to do. I have no schedule of this drill meet and the girls are supposed to call me and tell me what time they are scheduled to perform so I can go over there. Of course, this high school is about 30-45 minutes away. I hope to get some more pictures to post later.

Okay...confession...I have also spent a lot of time online this week researching a new cell phone. I get a new cell phone on Jan.1 and Tim gets one Jan. 11. We are with Verizon and you get a new cell phone every two years (really 22 months) with their program. Tim has lost his PDA and so I am looking at smartphones for both of us. There is not a lot of choice through Verizon, but to get an unlocked phone of another kind would be A LOT more money! I am such a techo-geek so I have been looking at all kinds of reviews, etc. to see what will serve us best for the best price. I told Tim that this phone (and the new house) would be plenty for a Christmas present for me, but I want to tell him exactly what I want and he always gets the same kind as I have so I can program it for him and figure it all out and just hand it over to him ready to go. He doesn't have time or patience to read directions and I love reading directions and seeing all the things my "gadgets" will do. I really need to move on to finish getting ready for Christmas now, but this was so much more fun for me.