Thanksgiving/Birthday Weekend

I kind of like having my birthday around Thanksgiving. Sometimes my birthday is on Thanksgiving, sometimes it's a day before, or a day after, but either way it usually falls somewhere in the four-day weekend, which is nice.

My sister was going to her boyfriend's house for Thanksgiving along with her daughter and her husband, and my other sister, who lives in Denver, was going to her husband's family, and Bob had to work. So it was just my brother and his family and me. I was originally going to go over to his house, but since it was just the five of us, he asked my parents if we could go over there, and they agreed. They don't really want to go anywhere anymore, and also don't want to have a whole houseful of people, but it worked out all right.

We bought over all the food, and cleaned up afterwards, so they didn't have to do anything. We got to eat, and talk, and didn't stay very long, and it was really nice.

The rest of the weekend I just kind of did what I wanted. I got a pedicure on Black Friday, and did a very small amount of shopping. I went to Kohl's for the sole purpose of spending a $10 coupon that I had gotten in the mail, and I went to JoAnn and bought supplies for Christmas gifts using their Black Friday coupons, and that was about it.

I had lunch at Noodles & Co. with a free coupon that they sent me, got my free birthday Starbucks drink, got a free small sundae at Culver's ... that was a lot of fun!

On Monday Julia brought doughnuts in to work for my birthday, and about a half dozen of us went out to lunch. Dan bought my lunch. All in all, it was a pretty good birthday week!

Vacation

We went on a mini-vacation last week. Even though I never really worried about it before, I have been a little more cautious about posting that we're gone. I did post a few photos, though. We went to Lake Taneycomo, and stayed at the condo of a friend of Bob's, right on the lake. Bob fished and I slept, read, and knitted a tiny bit, not much. I mostly read.

I read a book a day:

Say You're Sorry, by Michael Robotham
The Vanishing Point, by Val McDermid
Face of Betrayal, by Lis Wiehl
Heart of Ice, by Lis Wiehl
Don't Breathe a Word, by Jennifer McMahon

They had a big, squishy, long leather couch, and I laid on it so that I looked out the sliding glass doors over the lake. I'd read until I got sleepy, then just fall asleep and take a little nap, then maybe wake up and read some more. It was heaven.

In the mornings I would sit on the deck with a glass of lemonade, and read out there, then when Bob came in from fishing, he would make me breakfast. Sometimes he would cook dinner--hotdogs or pork chops on the grill--and a couple of times we went in to town to get groceries. We went in for dinner a couple of times--once to Long John Silver's and once to Golden Corral.

That was pretty much the extent of the week--reading, eating and sleeping. It was perfect! I really had a great, relaxing time. Bob had some trouble with the boat motor, so he wasn't able to do as much of the kind of fishing he wanted to do, but it all worked out.





Today I am grateful for:

1. Getting a new phone at work
   
2. Finding a pattern that I want to stitch (I'll show it when I get a little bit done)
   
3. Leftover pizza for lunch (again!)
   
4. Getting to go on vacation
   
5. Lots of books to read!
   

A quiet Hallowe'en

Halloween was fun at the office. Dexter and Olive Oyl had matching outfits -- doggie skeletons with candy corn and treats floating around inside. Olive is sort of used to wearing clothes -- she has a little parka, and a couple of sweater vests in addition to the lobster Halloween costume she wore last year -- but I don't think Dexter ever had before. But he seemed to adapt pretty well.

I loved that when they made their rounds of the offices to get treats, it was like they were trick-or-treating. The only thing that would have made it better is if they would have had little plastic pumpkins to carry around in their mouths to collect their treats!

At the end of the day, Julia borrowed Dexter's costume for Ranger, since he and Dexter are about the same size. I would have liked to have seen him in it, but I wonder if he was as blasé about it as Dexter was.

Bob was working until 9:30, so I wasn't really looking forward to being at home alone. We don't get very many trick-or-treaters anymore. They must all go to parties or something. Still, I had originally planned to go eat someplace--I had a coupon for a free salad bar at Sweet Tomatoes--but I got an email from Pizza Hut advertising tht you could get 2 or more large 3-topping pizzas for $9 each, so I decided to do that. I ordered two pizzas online (one with sausage, pepperoni and mushrooms and one with chicken, onions and mushrooms), to pick up on my way home.

I stopped at Hobby Lobby first and got some embroidery floss (I'm cross stitching again, yikes! Another hobby slash obsession!), then picked up the pizzas and headed home. It was around 7:00 when I got there. There was one house down at the end of the block that was lit up like they were having a party, but not much else was going on. My doorbell didn't ring once, and I was, frankly, glad.

I sat upstairs in the bedroom with Dinah and stitched, then went back downstairs when Bob got home and had pizza with him. A nice, quiet evening, the best kind.



Today I am grateful for:

1. Leftover pizza for lunch
   
2. Indian Summer weather
   
3. Good friends at work
   
4. Good books to read (Currently the "Chet the Dog" series, about Chet and his person, Bernie Little, who run a small--er, "little"--detective agency together. The books are told from Chet's perspective, which sounds weird, but really isn't.)
   
5. Getting back into stitching