Christmas Stories

I've seen a few families who have a Christmas book where they read a story from each night in the month of December. Do any of you have one of those books? If so, I'd love to make a copy of it. I'm trying to think ahead of cool things to do this year for Christmas and I've wanted one of these books for a while. Or is there one I could buy somewhere? And I wanted to do an advent calendar this year and I thought this might be the key to teaching Will to wait patiently for his piece of chocolate while we read a Christmas story at bedtime.

Where does Eric Clapton live?

We just heard that Eric Clapton lives in Columbus and I'm determined to figure out where he lives. My family is rolling into town this week and what better way to say, "Columbus is WAY cooler than you think" than by showing them a Rock and Roll legend lives here! So I'm posting this question out into the webosphere... where does he live? Is he a Powell guy? Or does he have more of a Dublin state-of-mind?

What can $100 get you at Kroger?

2 gallons of milk
2 dozen eggs
4 loaves of bread
7 boxes of fruit snacks
2 boxes of Nutri-Grain bars
2 packs of Huggies diapers
1 box of Huggies wipes
2 heads of garlic
1 head of romaine lettuce
2 bags of grapes
1 pack of hot dogs
1 lb. deli turkey
2 beef roasts
2 pork roasts
1 package of bratwurst
2 lbs. kielbasa sausage
1 bag mini bagels
7 bottles Kraft dressing
1 bottle of Coke
2 cans tomato sauce
1 box Ritz crackers
1 bag of Doritos
7 blocks of cheese
6 packs of toilet paper
1 bag onions

This wasn't my best week ever, but it was note-worthy. Some of my coupons didn't work, so it should have been about $5 less, but oh well. I stocked up on meat for a while and we'll definitely be eating a lot of pork this month. Spent $100, saved $100. There are few things that build more confidence than sticking it to the Man at the grocery store.

Rough

If you've watched Snow White recently, or in one of it's past "digitally remastered" or "extra scenes" Disney scam releases, you might remember the scene where Snow White stumbles upon the house in the forest where the dwarfs lived. She walked in and saw that it was a mess and she could have done one of two things:

1) Seen the wreckage and walked away, knowing that it would take her days to clean up after their mess. Or if she was slightly more hormonal, she might have sat down a cried feeling overwhelmed by how much there would be to do to clean this house in addition to finding Prince Charming.

or

2) Roll up her sleeves and get to work.

She chose the latter (and lucky for her, a billion furry/over-cheerful animals helped her get the job done quick).

Today, I had one of those days where you almost cringe by 10 am because you just know its going to be bad and you're afraid of how much worse its going to get. One of those days where my divine role of a mother and wife is drastically reduced to that of a helper, and I look selfishly towards a day where I can be taken care of. One of those days where it seems like you'll work and work and work and it will never pay off, and everyone has it so much better than you. It was just one of those days.

So I did what any girl would do. I waited for my kids to fall asleep at nap time and I sat on the couch and cried. For a good 5 or 10 minutes, I just let them fall where they may feeling as though I was the world's punching bag.

And then I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.

I remember a quote from President Monson saying something to the effect that work had the power to heal the soul, and I know it does. Lucky for me, my house looked like the County Health Department needed to step in earlier today and by this evening its looking slightly better.

Tomorrow will be better. I get to sleep in till 7:30, for one. And I get to sleep in because I give myself a day off from waking up at 5:20 to run so I can drop the kids off at the daycare at the gym to go to my favorite weightlifting class. Tomorrow. Just get to tomorrow.