If she had the proper words to say,

I mailed a box and two letters this afternoon, and I could not believe how crazy-busy the post office was! I figured that it would be dead now that it's AFTER Christmas, but it surely wasn't. The line was wrapped around inside the tiny room, and stretching out down the strip of a hall outside the door. Insane!

I don't know about other folks, but I wasn't there for Christmassy reasons, though. I was returning two pieces of my cookware to Pampered Chef. You see, after ten years of solid use, the nonstick coating on my 10" skillet and 4 qt. covered stockpot has finally deteriorated. I have the entire PC Professional Series of cookware, having earned it over three years' worth of parties back in the day. (I held a PC party every six months.) It has served me so well in all this time, but it has a lifetime guarantee, and Pampered Chef is replacing it all with brand-new pieces! Even if I had paid $800 for the cookware (which is what it would have been without my host benefits), I still think that's a steal for an estimated 20 years of hard work/cooking!

I can't wait to get the new stuff in return, and then I'll send off another two pieces. I've got to do it this way, though, because I just can't be without all of my cookware at one time, you know? Even as it is, I borrowed a skillet and 4 qt. pot from my neighbor while mine are in the mail!

We are all dead-tired. Well, I don't know for sure if A.J. is yet, since I will pick him up from school in just a few minutes. But we don't usually wake until 7:45, and Philip woke us all up at 4:30 this morning.

And we've gone to preschool, school, and work. Poor Jack is sacked out in the living room right now, and I hate that I have to wake him to go get A.J. *sigh* We've also got an errand to run, and I'm going to do that while we're out, rather than venture back out again later. Sue should be dropping by tonight after church with my Pampered Chef® order from her show, and I imagine we'll all crash early after she's gone.

Add to the less sleep the emotions of the day, and you've got three tired puppies over here.

So. Tired.

I'm not looking forward to shoveling snow tomorrow either, but it looks like that's what I'll be doing. *sigh*

Whew! It's been a whirlwind of a day!

On Saturdays, we usually sleep in pretty late. Instead, today I woke up at 7:45am and started my day. I showered, got dressed and then woke up Philip as well. I left early to be at the commissary right at 9am (I wasn't sure when they opened exactly, but I was fairly certain that they'd be open by then), and Philip built a new bookcase for A.J.'s room that we had bought yesterday afternoon (one of those $30 ones, you know - we have tons of them) while I was gone. I bought tons of groceries, and it took the bagger three carts to get it all out to the car.

I arrived home just a few minutes before 11am, and then Philip left for Runza for a few hours. In that time, I put away all the groceries - it took me a solid HOUR because there was so much stuff! Then it took me another HOUR to clean, cut up and package all of the meat for freezing. I fixed the boys lunch before I started packaging the meat, and then I finally stopped and ate my lunch once I was done with it all. I was still cleaning up and putting away some things from the day before when Philip came back home, and I hadn't sat down once yet!

He moved the new bookcase into A.J.'s room, and then I set to work arranging all of the new bins and tubs on the shelves and filling each one with just the right action figures or toy collections. We'd bought all the bins at the same time as the bookcase, really watching the dimensions of each item and trying to map out how to best fit them on the bookcase without actually having the bookcase built to go by. As it turns out, we had done it perfectly! Now there are no figurines or kids' meal toys or birthday cards or watches cluttering over A.J.'s dresser, other bookshelves and desk. We had to move two of A.J.'s coat & hat hooks as well. Everything has a place, and it looks so neat!

I did a few loads of laundry throughout the day as well. :-)

Heather arrived before I was ready to leave, and we were in a rush to get everyone going in the right direction. We were leaving for Annie's new house (which is so awesome that I can't properly explain it!) for her Pampered Chef party at 5pm, and Philip and the boys were heading out the door to go and pick up Rachel, our babysitter. The boys had just hopped out of the bathtub, and it was a rush to get them dressed and out the door. Philip was heading back to Runza as soon as he dropped Rachel and the boys off at home.

Annie's party went very well, and she gave us a full tour of the new house. I can't wait to go back and see it again - it's that gorgeous. We left the party around 7:15pm or so, and then Heather brought me home. Rachel and the boys had played outside, and we nearly hit one of the bikes in the driveway when we came home, not expecting it to be there! Rachel had made pizza for the boys, and she'd had them pick up the toys and had washed all the dishes - I absolutely love her, and the boys do too. :-)

Philip came home shortly after 8pm, and then puttered around the house for a bit before deciding to head out to Wal*Mart to get another cheap bookcase for Jack's room as well. Tomorrow we'll reorganize his room (he only has two shelves in his room right now, whereas A.J. had four plus a desk and STILL needed more room - so you can imagine how much Jack needs this space too), and then everything will be perfect. Oh, and I also found Sliding Doors on DVD for $4.88 - yay!

We got in laaaaaaate, just after 11pm and the boys went straight to bed. I'm sure we'll all be sleepyheads in the morning, and it'll be tough to get everyone out of bed and to church... but we'll manage. ;-)

In case you're curious... ( my Pampered Chef order )

Yay! The Pampered Chef party was great fun! Seven lovely ladies showed up, plus Jan, my consultant, and we had a great time until about 10 minutes ago (and the party was at 5:00pm, by the way). I love when parties turn into girls' night chat-fests afterwards - it's the best part of the party!

I have two outside orders right now, and 6 more promised, so my show is looking really good. I only needed $70 in sales to get what *I* wanted for free, and I'm WAY above that. Whee!

Jan put on a wonderful show for me, and she made a Barbecue Chicken Ring for the appetizer and Banana Split Brownie Squares for the dessert. Both recipes were much too yummy. She forgot her Medium Bar Pan on the way out, and she called me later to tell me. I told her I'd bring it tomorrow to the scrapbooking group. Then, just minutes ago, I was cleaning up and I found a large black shoulder bag full of PC stuff and a tan and brown purse. I knew that if it was Jan's, she'd be frantic for it in the morning, so I went ahead and called her even though it was late - I woke her up, but she said she was so glad I'd called because YES - she would have been a mess. So I'll take all of her leftover things to church with me in the morning. :-)

I went on a Magic Eraser® trip earlier today. I wanted to hang up all of my bats for Halloween, and then I decided that I wanted to wash the fronts of the overhead cabinets first. That quickly turned into also washing the bottom cabinets, which then turned into scrubbing the outside and then also the inside of the refrigerator, which then led to scrubbing the closet doors and front door. I just kept going, and I couldn't stop! I ♥ my Magic Eraser®.

I'm ready for the humid, muggy weather to go away for real. It did disappear for a week or so there, and I was happily back into the swing of curling and styling my hair again every other day. But no - now we're back to this muggy, awful, icky, wet weather again, and there's no point curling my hair when I'm going to walk through a gallon of water in the air with each step. Ugh.

Oof. Time to go do some work for MuggleNet. :-)