Happy Turkey Day!

It's almost over...

I love Thanksgiving! We get to spend some good quality family time together. We make the meal together, we clean up together, and we play games. I ate way too much, but today is the one day a year when it is okay to do that! We had all the traditional turkey stuff and from the looks of it, we will probably be eating turkey for the next week!

We actually even already have our tree up. It seems Thanksgiving is so late in the month this year so we spent last night getting our tree together. It looks beautiful and homey... it even already has presents under it. None for me though - I already checked. Hee-hee...

So tomorrow, I'm not going to any of the sales. Instead I'm heading off to work. Although it's against my will to go, I don't have a choice. A bunch of co-workers sent out an e-mail yesterday, and I think my department is going to be the only ones working on the 2nd floor tomorrow. Not really, but it started to seem that way at about 4:30. But I'm thankful. I'm thankful for our awesome God, my family, my friends, my co-workers, and the constant provision God has given us through the year.

"Where did all my money go?"

That is a question we get a lot of calls about at work. It's as if the credit union does some magic and we manage to use all of their money without them knowing. We secretly deduct a penny here and there and hope you won't notice... I don't think so.

So in return, we always ask, "Well, do you keep a register."

I have heard a lot of responses to this question. Some people don't lie and just plain out tell you no. Some people say yes and try to come up with crazy reasons as to why their register is $634 off what their balance is. Some people try to make excuses about why they don't (I'm not good in math; I can look at it on-line; I know how much I spend; etc, etc.) Well, on Friday, I was reading the notes on someone's account and I found my favorite reason as to why a person does not keep a register:

"I have a photographic memory and I will remember everything."

This made our Friday afternoon.

Two busy days down, two more to go...

Our sleepover is over!!! We made it and I think the girls had a wonderful time! I had a blast watching them play games and make new friends. I still haven't recovered from lack of sleep yet, but I think I will catch up on that tonight. Three of us slept on a queen air mattress with a secret hole in it. In the middle of the night, I hear this sound and one of the girls is blowing up the mattress while we are still on it. The unevenness must've bothered her. Well, not only did the girls have great fellowship, but so did I. I got to know a couple of my friends a bit better and they were such an amazing help to me.

Then I headed off to a 25th wedding anniversary party for one of my good friend's parents. Their relationship just sets such a positive example of how marriage should be - with God in the center. It's something I look forward to in life. The celebration was beautiful.

Tomorrow, I have another party at my boss' house - an Indian summer party. I've never been to one of those, so we shall see how it goes. Then the weekend will be over...

But the best part is, I am off Monday and Tuesday!!! Yay!!!

Thanksgiving Delivery

Tonight we had our annual Thanksgiving meal delivery to a family with Chi Alpha. This is one of my favorite things we do and I look forward to this event every year. A girl and boy small group get together and deliver an entire Thanksgiving meal to a deserving family. Each member of the small group pitches in parts of the meal, and together, we make a feast.

Tonight, we delivered to an amazing family. I think she was a little shocked at first to see a large group of people standing at her front door with grocery bags in their hands. None of us knew the lady, but she is a single mom of four children, her youngest being twin girls. It turns out, one of us has met her before, and was actually her NICU nurse during the delivery of her twins. This set of twins was also my friend's first set of twins she ever had to take care of. How amazing is that?!?

God had a purpose when he sent us to their house. They truly appreciated what we did. Her parents happened to be around too and we all joined together in prayer. Although I know they felt really blessed by what we did, I think we were even more blessed knowing this family will have a good Thanksgiving.

A surprise

Today, one of my little Daisies surprised me with this:

Cute, huh? And I had no idea. I was even asking her to tell us how to make it and she said she would show us in December as a Christmas craft. So now I have it up in my room (because it's not too early to hang up Christmas decorations!) I just loved it. It even has my favorite color.

This little daisy is just so amazing. I can already see her heart for the Lord. We are currently taking up a special offering for kids in Bolivia. On her own, she sold cookies and raised her special offering. I am very proud of her and I'm so blessed with such good kids who are so eager to learn about Jesus every time they come. They are all truly amazing!

Tattoos

This past weekend, Diamond attended a slumber party birthday. When I went to pick her up Saturday morning so we could head directly to Santa's market, I find my child with make-up and tattoos all over herself... Great! Lovely! She's definitely a girly girl that's for sure.

Anyway, it's finally time for the tattoos to go and they are the hardest things to get rid of. I've tried everything and I think nail polish has been the most successful. It still leaves a gooey residue all over my fingers and her skin though. I guess I can be thankful they are temporary. =)

Coconut cream pie

I made some tonight... But I have to wait until tomorrow to eat it...

I don't know if I can wait that long... I think a couple of hours will do the trick!

My baby is sick

I come home from small groups to find my baby curled up in a blanket with tears in her eyes. She hardly ever gets sick and if she does, it's usually perfectly timed for the holidays (we spent Christmas in the emergency room last year.) She hasn't missed a day of school yet and had perfect attendance last year as well. So she is really bummed out that she is not feeling well because she is afraid of being absent tomorrow. I hope she hasn't caught the bug that's going around because that just hasn't been any fun. But I tucked her in and we prayed together and she was asleep before 9. Poor baby... Get well soon...

A scare

I thought I lost my checkbook today, or yesterday, or the day before. I couldn't remember. And for someone that works in the banking industry, I've seen the horrors of lost checkbooks and I did not want mine to be another one. In my panic, I tried looking all over my house, under the chairs of my car, in my desk at work, and I even called the church because it was the last place I took it out to use. No where to be found...

So as I'm driving to pick my daughter up from piano lessons, I start replaying each day one by one and I finally remember... Middle console of my car. I stuck it in there so I could stuff candy and a soda in my purse.

Man, old age must really start to be kicking in now...

MIddle of the week day off

Yup, that's what today was. In honor of veteran's day. So to all the veterans who have served our country, thank you... I guess it also helps I work somewhere that celebrates federal holidays because the kids had school.

I debated on staying awake after taking Diamond to the bus stop, but it didn't take me very long to decide to sleep a little longer. After waking up, I decided to go out and enjoy the day. I went over to my co-worker's house and played with her new toy. She got a Cricut and for any one out there who is a scrapbooker or loves to make crafts, this is the coolest thing out there. I want one now. I can either save up for one or someone, (ehem, ehem mom and dad) can get me one for Christmas. We played with it for a while until I had to move on to my dentist appointment. And unlike my last visit, I am cavity free!!! I also went to the movie theater twice today. I don't think I've done that in a very long time.

So, now I get to go to bed and thank God for a wonderful day.

Yup... some boring update, huh? Really cool and interesting things just haven't been happening. So the results are a post about my day off.

Reunion

Tonight I reunited with my old co-worker/friend from Japan. I haven't seen her in five years and I was so thankful she decided to go out of her way home and make a trip down here. She was heading from Wichita Falls but was going home to Mississippi. She visited our house and we went out to dinner with another couple who also used to live in Japan. After dinner, we headed to the other couple's house to have some cocunut cream pie. It was great times and good laughs. Not only did we get to catch up on our silly stories, we made new friends and got a delicious coconut cream pie recipe. So now it is our turn to visit good old Biloxi...

Wii Fit

I got one... It wasn't very easy to find either. I found out you needed the board to play some other Wii games so I figured why not. I tried it. It's a lot harder than it looks. And it does make you break a sweat if you do it long enough. The fun thing about it is that you move around and play to be top score all at the same time. So if you're competitive, and like to win, it may motivate you to move faster, which in turn burns more calories. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

My star

And of course how could I forget... My superstar!

Something else...

We ate at this Chinese barbecue restuarant while we were there and the first thing you see when you walk in is this...

It's a duck - appetizing? I didn't think so, but it was too late once I walked in to walk out. Then I turned the corner of this cooking section and saw this...

More duckies. You would be amazed, but this restuarant was packed the whole entire time with people waiting outside the door. It was good, if you ordered regular Chinese food, but this barbecue duck thing... well, I'm just not too sure about it.

Austin

Yesterday, I took my first trip to Austin. It was a nice little day trip I took with my family. We were actually on a mission. We missed the shipment of cargo boxes to the Philippines at the local oriental store so we hauled our ginormous box weighing over a hundred pounds all the way over there in hopes to find a cargo shipper.

Mission accomplished - and for about $30 cheaper too!

On top of that, we also found a really large oriental store. It was as big as a Wal-mart and had everything you could possibly think of oriental. It was like oriental store heaven. We went crazy in that store because I don't know if you have ever been to the one here, but the selection is VERY limited and also marked up in price quite a bit compared to that one over there.

They even had my special eggs. If you don't know what eggs I'm talking about, refer back to my 7 weird things about me post. Oh and they had a fish tank. Not only did they have really large fish, like tilapia on steroids, but you could also hand pick it out of the tank yourself. Lovely, huh? As much as Diamond loves animals, I don't think she was very amused with that. We came bag with a load of groceries... and some other stuff too.