Sunny Warm Saturday

Yesterday was a fairly routine one. After Chris came home from work, his brother (from Thunder Bay) came to visit. When I talked to him on the phone earlier, I said I'd make something for supper. I had taken a big package of chicken out of the freezer and planned on doing something with it. By the time he arrived, there was no supper in sight. Oy. So we ordered Chinese food from Ho-Ho's and it was gooooooood. Especially since I bailed on cooking! Not long after supper I was suffering from sheer exhaustion. Carter had gone into our room to hide and strip all the blankets off our bed; a nasty little trick he likes to pull. So I bunched up all the blankets and threw them on him and of course he giggled his head off. Then he said it was my turn to hide. It was cozy and warm (I was freezing and tired) and I fell asleep! Carter had shut my bedroom door so I had it relatively peaceful and quiet for about forty-five minutes until Chris (noisily) opened the door and jarred me back into consciousness! He and his brother were going out for awhile and since Carter was still up of course I had to be on kid duty! Cooper was kind enough to sleep for me, and Carter and I played for awhile then cuddled up on the couch, hopefully to sleep, but no. Chris came home and he and Carter fell asleep side by side on the living room floor, so I left them there and went to bed.

This morning my final awakening was at seven o'clock. A little early for my liking, but hey my liking doesn't seem to count! I got at least four consecutive hours of sleep throughout the night, so it wasn't too bad.

Not long after we got up, Carter got the fantastic idea of going for coffee and donuts. Translation = A small French vanilla cappucino (hereinafter referred to as FVC) and a toasted bagel for him. An extra large FVC for me and a bagel for me too, and a large double-double and a bagel for Chris (all from Tim Horton's of course).

But before that I had to put on my face, dress two kids and feed Cooper. We headed out right around nine o'clock, maybe even a little before; I'm not too sure. First stop was Chris's shop, because he had taken Carter's booster seat out of the Jeep for me when I drove the gals to Bingo the other night. I buckled him in with just the seatbelt in the back seat and put the booster seat up front until we got to the shop. Then I white-knuckled it to the shop and Chris put in the booster seat and I was much more happy and we safely traveled to Timmy's for the breakfast goodies.

We brought Chris his breaky and I decided to drop in to visit my parents. (This involves a ten-mile drive - a beeeyooteeeful one at that, with all the gorgeous colours of fall along the way.) We did a sneak attack and they were very surprised to find Carter ringing the doorbell. We finished our snacks then I helped my Mom (Fatima...wink, wink Beth!) get a couple little things ready for Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow night. There will be twenty-four diners there for the festivities; all at one table - my Mom's specialty! And this is by no means a record...and not all the whole fam-damily will be there.

I folded some napkins into fans and Mom had covered the tables with pretty cream-coloured tablecloths and adorned them with ornamental gourds and mini-pumpkins. How very Martha of us! The napkins were a deep brown print, and sort of resembled turkey tails; how fitting! I wanted to go out and get some coloured leaves to scatter on the tables - I still think I'll do that tomorrow. I polished all the cutlery and did Mom's hair for a party they were going to this afternoon (and another this evening - those party animals!)

I was just getting the boys ready to come home when they both decided it was naptime. Again, we got up a little earlier this morning; therefore naptime was earlier too. Mom and Dad had some leftover mussels from supper yesterday, and wanted to feed them to me for lunch. At first I said no thanks; I just wanted to get the boys going, but hey, who wants to wake sleeping children when you can have lunch made for you??? So I just wanted a taste, and they were so FANTASTIC Mom served me up a whole big bowl of them and we and Dad had a little feast. The red sauce tasted a little like minestrone soup but even better and the mussels were great.

Dad carried Carter out to the Jeep and I carried Cooper and they both slept the rest of the way home. Next item on the agenda was the marathon Wal-Mart run. I left Carter with Chris, who was home from work by this time. Cooper and I headed to Wal-Mart for the big cartful. Unfortunately I left my list at Mom & Dad's house so I had to wing it. I definitely needed diapers, pull-ups, wipes, baby food, baby cookies, drain cleaner and bathroom cleaner. Somehow, three pumpkins, four baby outfits, a pair of pants for Carter, Bounce sheets, a DVD player (only $24.97!) and various Christmas presents made their way into the cart for a grand total of around two hundred forty-eight bucks. Yikes. That was without the groceries I needed.

I took all the loot home and put it all away and dropped off Cooper to run to the grocery store to get the stuff for making the oriental salad and perogies to take to Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow. I bolted to Extra Foods (I pretty much have a love/hate thing for that place but the prices kick Safeway's ass.) I bought coleslaw, slivered almonds, bacon, rice, fajita seasoning and a bag of apples and headed for the till. In an extra effort to be expedient, I only brought in my bank card and had it in my pocket along with a ten dollar bill (which of course wouldn't touch the total but I still had in my pocket.) Anyhoo, girlie starts ringing through my order and I can't find my bank card. Crap. First I asked if the girl could announce on the PA that I dropped my card and could someone return it to her till, or customer service. But no, for some reason, it's another service that they don't seem to offer at this place. A nice young grocery guy in the aisle had helped me find the real bacon bits. I scoured every aisle I had been in, and same grocery guy saw me madly looking about. On the second time I met him in the aisle on my mad dash for the card, he asked me if he could help find something. I said my bank card, and he was the one to find it and had brought it to the customer service till. I wonder if he also found the ten bucks. If he did, I guess that was his reward for returning the card? Karma?

Finally I went home and got all the groceries put away. Then it was pretty much time to get supper ready. I had taken the aforementioned big package of chicken out of the freezer yesterday and needed to cook it. I cut four breasts into strips to make fajitas, then boiled the other four so I could freeze them again. Just as I was about to cook the strips for the fajitas, I did a tortilla check...expiry was March 2006 on both packages. Crap. They seemed fine but I was kinda concerned and chucked them. I asked Carter if he wanted to go for a quick Jeep ride with me and we went to Safeway. I picked up the tortillas and some breadcrumbs because they were on the same shelf and I remembered I needed them. Carter was an awesome little helper and we rushed home so I could continue making supper. I added red and green pepper and white onion to the cooking chicken and prepared a salad with lettuce, carrots, and radishes. (HAHA - it was a bag salad!) We ate supper and Chris's brother Jason came to visit again. He played with the kids and Carter was all revved up. Eventually Cooper went to sleep and Carter did a quick crash'n'burn on the floor since he had a short nap today. After Jason left, I had an awesome hot bath and did some much needed leg-shaving! It's very rare that I don't have two kids climbing into the tub whenever I start to run a bath so I didn't get out until I was good'n'pruny!

I headed for the blog since I had so much catching up to do. There should be a prize for reading this post all the way to the end. Sorry, no prize, but you can see my new scrapbook page I did with Christy's new kit, "Fun in Flannel". This is a picture of Chris and Carter when we took Carter sliding for the first time a couple years ago. I had to "Frankenstein" Carter's head from another picture since he and Chris weren't both looking in any of the pics I took. Also, to make the photo match the kit, I changed the colours of his snowmobile suit to match! God I love Photoshop! Now I can't believe it's after midnight, and SNL is over so I'm going to go to bed! Good night!