I'm getting an early start to my Monday! I'm sipping some Orange Cappucino (YUM!!). It's been a while since I've had any. I've got my dishwasher running and I'm doing my blog entry for the day. My goal is to be super productive today and get a number of things done.
Our weekends normally always start on Friday, which is SUPER nice. The weekends are still always too short, but I guess they are never as short as the typical two day weekend would seem. Anyway, back to Friday... We all got out of bed a little late, probably around 8:30 or so, we ate breakfast and went to the YMCA that morning. Our only other plans for that day were coming back home, and maybe going out to the grocery store later, and Matt wanted to burn his big pile of sticks from the three trees he cut down last weekend.
We got home from the Y, piddled around for a bit, and then went back out. We made one grocery store stop, then walked through Walmart, then we went to the post office to mail a couple big envelopes, and THEN we headed down to Charlotte to look at some amps/receivers for our surround sound. Poor Matt... he is so torn on replacing our amp/receiver. The center channel doesn't work, and of course the warranty has run out, and of course you can't find anyone who will really work on the brand it is (NAD). We are the best at finding brands most people have never heard of... ever heard of a Venta Airwasher or a Bamix handmixer?? Well, if you haven't, WE HAVE BOTH OF THOSE. Usually, we enjoy using our uncommon brand stuff, but the amp is probably the only thing with which we've had issues.
Our first stop was lunch at Jason's Deli. I love eating there. Matt and I shared a taco salad, and Aiden had a pb&j with a fruit cup and some apple juice. The big kid food is a little expensive, but you get so much. And a meal for the little kids is only like $2, so I really can't complain. They did skimp on Aiden's fruit cup this time though. Aiden had fun with the free ice cream cone too. He put his mini muffin in the top of the cone and ate his muffin cone. He's such a nut!
So we get down to the Tweeter store and Matt takes some time looking at the different models he has in mind. In the meantime, Aiden and I are enjoying watching the HDTV's they have on display. Aiden especially liked the horse race! He also enjoyed watching the BASE jumpers diving off of cliffs. Everytime they jumped off, Aiden would say, "UH OH!!!!" I told him to NEVER do anything like that, at least while I was alive! Matt finished up and we walked out of the store empty handed.
We then ventured through the parking lot to Barnes&Noble (all of these stores are around the mall). I wanted to find a specific book on potty training that I've heard good things about. It's written by Mo Willems (he's written for Sesame Street and also has a ton of other children's books on etiquette, et al). Time to Pee comes with a chart and stickers, and while I could do all this by myself, I thought a NEW BOOK might be just one more tool in my toilet-training arsenal.
Alas, B&N did not have the book I wanted, but Aiden did get some playtime in with the Thomas trainset they had in the kids' section. Which gave us the NEXT idea of heading over to TRU (that's Toys 'R Us for all you non-parental types) to check out train sets and train tables. Though they didn't have what we thought we might be able to get there, that put a wild hair in our hineys for finally working on what we said we were doing for Aiden's Christmas present... a train table! Matt had planned on building the table himself, but after doing some online research, there are some nice tables out there that are reasonably priced, and buying a table takes much less time than building it himself... and Matt is stretched thin with his free time right now. So, we're buying some track sets off of ebay and we're going to find a table, and hopefully in a few weeks, we will surprise Aiden with his super late Christmas present. :o)
We finished up at TRU, headed over to Best Buy to look at their amps. Aiden and I sat on the floor and watched Jewel sing on the HDTV's while Matt shopped. Again, we walked out of the store empty handed. We then came home and made some yummy hamburgers and called it a night.
We got up Saturday, and quite honestly, right now I can't remember how the day started. Matt's intentions for Saturday was to do some more work outside. It was a cool cloudy day and Matt got a decent bit of work done. We decided to have lunch and then take a drive in the new-to-us Volvo, something we haven't done yet, up to the mountains since it was snowing up there. It was a fun drive and the snow in the mountains was beautiful! It really makes us miss our 'home.' We stopped at the original Mast General Store, shopped for a little while, and walked out with a bottle of Burt's Bees Baby Bee Buttermilk Lotion (if you haven't tried Burt's Bees products you should!), a 4-foot stick of beef jerky, a bottle of rootbeer for Matt, a bottle of Cheerwine for me (made with REAL SUGAR and not corn syrup... it makes all the difference!!), and some candy from the candy bins for Aiden. It was beginning to get dark, and it was getting close to suppertime, so we headed back down the mountain, stopped at Ruby Tuesday's for dinner and then came home.
Yesterday was a typical Sunday except we didn't head to Grandma's as she is in Florida for a reunion. It was incredibly windy here yesterday and it's cold this morning (19!). However, we might see 70's later in the week... unbelievable! My daffodils are now blooming too...
Happy Monday!
