We're Headed to Texas!

I'm just as surprised as you are.

"Wow! How long has this trip been in the works?"

Oh, a few hours now, I guess. For being sooooo extremely Choleric and always having a plan for himself and several for me (ha!), James sure has turned into a spontaneous kind of guy. It's good, for the most part.

You see, it's like this. We finished up on the Regional Paper today and got it all printed. The next step is assembling all of the pages, folding them, stapling them, and stuffing and addressing the envelopes. It's a 12 page-er and we make about 175 copies. It's not a whole lot of fun to do by yourself and James really misses the assistance we used to get from Sam & Tammy. So we're going to drive 6 hours tomorrow so they can help us! HA! Okay, so that's not ALL we're doing...

We got to looking at our upcoming events and realized that this is really our best shot at being able to visit the Texas churches, what, with all of the District Conventions coming up. So we're going to get some help with the Church paper, make a church visit in Andrews, drive over to Merkel to visit with the Luna's, as well as stay with Aunt Sue & Uncle Jerry, at least have lunch or something with Stacey (if it works out--she doesn't know we're coming yet), and hopefully be able to squeeze in some games with Sam & Tammy and Frank. Ah, yes! Frank, my old game buddy. Wonder if Tammy will let the two of us play on the same team... Nah! Oh well, should be fun anyway!

We had a full and productive day today. Got up and hit the road for a day on the town. First stop: library. We were puzzled by the empty parking lot at first. Ah, yes. The library is closed on Mondays. The kids had great fun with the book drop though. The first time is always so exciting. Apparently!

After that we headed to Barnes & Noble so Katie could look around and possibly use her gift card. No problem there. My kids are all so different. Sam has used his gift card on two different occasions and bought toys that he's gotten a ton of use out of already--and he's got enough left on the card for another purchase or two. Joe has tried with all of his might to use his gift card several times, but just can't make himself do it. Katie marched into Barnes & Noble today (our first chance to get there since she got the card), bought three Children's Classics books (read the first one in its entirety tonight) and a Garfield book and walked out with .56 change. Ha!

We perused the mall a bit today and I'm so glad we did. We had a few gift cards to use up at Sears and Penney's. (We had returned some things that were the wrong sizes and such after Christmas and just got gift cards for the stores instead of fighting the after Christmas crowds.) Everybody was having HUGE sales and we got some fantastic deals. I got a pair of Deer Stag dress shoes for Joe (usually pretty expensive ones--at least for our taste!) for $4 and a really adorable shirt for Katie for $3. I can't remember what all we got, but at prices like that--and with a gift card, making it basically "free"--you can fill up a bag pretty quick! We spent very little money today, but were blessed to find several things the kids really needed, and a few deals for James, too. As if that wasn't enough we stopped at the Family Thrift Center afterward. :-) I told James we really ought to stop in there once a month. We found a really nice dress for Katie for $3 and a suit jacket for Joe for $1 (can you believe that?!), a jean jacket for Sam, a denim skirt for me, some "bloomers" (little cotton pants--in size 3! Ha!) for Katie... It was such a successful shopping day. And being homeschoolers, we did it without the crowds! :-)

We made another stop or two before coming home. It was then that we decided on this Texas trip. So I've spent all evening cleaning the house and I managed to get all of the laundry and ironing done. I've got the kids and myself pretty well packed, too. The kids spent their evening doing school and taking baths. Now it's just past midnight and I'm bushed. But I wanted to let everybody know what we're doing the next few days instead of just mysteriously disappearing from Blogland. Now you know I'll be with real, live people again! :-) Makes me happy. We plan to be back Friday night. Have a great week!