If she had the proper words to say,

Oh man, I am so tired tonight! I went to bed around 4am this morning, and then I woke up at 8 to get ready to volunteer at Jack's school. Once there, I copied, cut, pasted, and laminated my heart out! I was absolutely famished by the time lunch rolled around. For once, I actually finished all of my lunch tray before Jack or his friends finished theirs!

I stayed for an extra hour after lunch to finish up a project for Jack's teacher, and then I braved both the commissary and the Youth Center in the cold. I got Jack registered for this year's indoor soccer season, and then I stopped by A.J.'s school (which had just let out and loaded buses) for a quick chat with one of his teachers. They were all in a meeting, however, so I'll have to catch them tomorrow, I suppose.

This evening, I was starting to brown the hamburger meat for chili when I smelled something... off. I followed my nose to the basement, where we found one of the litterboxes to be quite full of pee. Cleaning the litter is one of A.J.'s daily chores, and I think he had been skimming it for a while. Ick! I rarely go into the basement/playroom except to do laundry, so this led to an entire family event: a "game night" consisting of deep-cleaning the basement from top-to-bottom. I ran upstairs a few times to add things to the chili, and when we finally finished, we had a warm, hearty meal waiting for us. Because of the later hour, I think we were all especially silly at the dinner table, too!

I'm turning in early tonight. Actually, this is super-early for me... before midnight, even!

Well, we were supposed to have roast tonight for dinner. I planned it this way so that we could have the resulting leftover beef stew tomorrow night - an easy dinner after Jack's first soccer game of the season. However, when I pulled the chunk of meat out of the fridge at 2pm for searing, it was still a solidly frozen block. Drat.

Instead, it's back in the fridge for more thawing time (though it already had two days!), and tonight I've bumped up a meal from later on in the week: goulash, broccoli, and cottage cheese. Just a bit ago, I was standing in the kitchen, wondering what to do with myself. It was still a little early to prep dinner, but I really wanted to be in there. So... I whipped up a batch of fudge brownies, and now they're in the oven. We'll have them for dessert tonight.

Today, I updated the boys' book lists, paid all our bills, entered all Coke points into the system, cleared my desk and the bar (paper "hot spots" in this house), dropped off a prescription, shopped a short list at the commissary, stopped in and had lunch with Jack at his school, chatted for over an hour with bigbrain61 on the phone, filled the prescription, and put away the groceries. Believe it or not, that was ALL before noon! By the time I was done with all of that, I laid down on the couch for a quick nap, and then I woke up when A.J. came in from school. Once Jack was also home, I loaded up the boys and headed to the barber shop. It's payday, as well as the day before Picture Day at the elementary school, so there was quite a lengthy wait. Finally, the boys were sheared, and then we did some birthday shopping for October.

I'm thinking about making some cookies in the next couple days, but they're just "test" subjects, so I haven't fully decided. I have one large order and two small orders to do in the next two weeks, and I still have several cookies I need to post (Facebook seems to get those pictures first, I guess).

It looked light it might rain today, and there was a chance of it, but it never happened. The weather should be nice and warm again tomorrow, though. I'm taking pictures of a newborn baby boy in the morning. (Well, it's scheduled, at least.) He'll be just ten days new, and I hope he's sleepy. His mama was very sweet when I met her at a surprise birthday party for my neighbor last Saturday. I'm excited, and I know she is as well. She understands that this is not really what I do, but she's willing to accept that with good faith!

I hope to pull out my fall decorations soon. I might do it this weekend. We're also discussing which weekends to look at for hanging lights. (When we lived in Alaska, he usually hung white lights on the roof in September. That way, we used them with orange lights for Halloween and later with more white lights for Christmas. Plus, he didn't have to be outside/climb on the roof in the bitter cold once winter and snow had come.) Philip is trying to either get leave or get someone to switch him a shift so that he can have the 24th off next Friday. The boys are out of school that day for inservice, and we're planning to go down to Bismarck for the day. We actually haven't been back to Bismarck since passing through it when we moved here!

Goodness, the brownies are smelling absolutely heavenly at the moment. I just pulled them from the oven, and I can't wait to have a fresh one in a little while! :-)

Today has been a non-stop whirlwind - since we woke up, that is. ;-)

Right at noon, while I was still snoozing lightly in bed, I woke up to the doorbell. It was a faint ring, and I wasn't even really sure I heard it. I laid there contemplating it for a little bit, and then at 12:03, I heard it again. Philip went to answer it (his pajamas are better suited for door-answering), and it was my friend Jan dropping off a bunch of stuff. She'd called earlier, but we'd slept right through that. And Jack was curled up asleep on the couch (Philip had taken A.J. to school and then come back home and gotten back in bed hours before). Jack had a stuffy nose yesterday, so I wasn't too surprised at that this morning.

So I got up for the day then. I paid a bunch of bills online, but I never allowed myself to even check LiveJournal, as I had tons of things that I wanted to get done today first. Philip finally got up as well about an hour later, and then I told him some of the errands I wanted to run. He and Jack got dressed, Jack ate a hot dog quickly and then we got going. We went to the one bank first, took money out and then put it into another bank (yes, we really do that sometimes). We dropped off a few more items at the church for their garage sale, and then I ran into the preschool for a bit to chat with Jack's teachers while there were no students. We ended up talking for half an hour or so, and Philip had to come in and drag me out!

We drove to Nebraska Furniture Mart to pay our bill, and then we raced back to pick up A.J. from school. After doing so, we grabbed a quick (but late!) bite to eat: I had Subway, and Philip and the boys had Burger King (though the boys just split an order of fries and had ICEEs). We got stuck in traffic at the base gate on our way in (a delivery truck had to be turned around to enter a different gate), and then we dropped Philip off for his Flight Chiefs meeting while the boys and I headed to the commissary for our grocery shopping. We ran into Heather while there, but she only needed a few things so we chatted for just a tiny bit. We were just over halfway through with our shopping when Philip grabbed me around my waist as I picked out packages of ground beef (and scared the crap out of me!). He'd walked over after his meeting, and we all finished our shopping together. We came home then, and Philip took the boys to the park (and Jack rode his bike all the way there and back) while I put away all the groceries and repackaged the meat for freezing. I also gathered up all the trash and reorganized the freezer.

They came back promptly at 6:45pm, and I was finishing up the meat. We all piled in the car and headed to Great Clips for A.J. to get a haircut. While Philip had the boys in there, I went to Hallmark to buy cards for Mother's Day (yes, I realize they might not make it in time - I almost forgot!). The boys finished up about the same time I did, and then we all headed to Menard's for some garden stuff. We bought some peat moss, grass seed, garden gloves, black tarpy stuff and some other miscellaneous stuff. Once we were done there, we headed to Famous Dave's for dinner.

It was after 9:15pm by the time we were done, and that was late for us already (the boys usually go to bed at 9pm), but we still needed to get to Wal*Mart. We had to buy birthday gifts for our niece (which have to be mailed out tomorrow), and we also needed a gift for a birthday party the boys are attending on Friday. We picked those things out and then - finally! - came back home. Philip dunked the boys in the tub for a super-fast bath while I vacuumed the living room before his friends came over to play X-Box. We tucked the boys in bed, and then I set to work packaging the chicken I'd not been able to get done earlier.

Philip is now playing with his buddies, and I'm about to hop in the shower. My feet are killing me, but I want to get that done, and then I'll be back to check in on my friends' list for today. If I'm lucky, y'all didn't write much while I was gone all day... but I doubt that! ;-)

Well, today was even busier than I'd thought it would be. Philip had an impromptu meeting called at 1:30, and I had to leave Jan's house with both Jack and Cole in tow in just a minute's notice. I felt awful leaving her a note, but I didn't have any other choice. Thankfully, we dropped off Philip at the base and returned back to Jan's house just minutes after she arrived home herself... so she hadn't really had to wait much.

A.J.'s parent/teacher conference went very well - he scores 97% or above in every single subject or area. He's reading at 87wpm (reading a paragraphed story during a timed test), and that's a significant improvement over his 61wpm during an assessment at the beginning of the year... and that was already "advanced" level! Jack sat very quietly in the chair next to A.J. during the conference, and that was amazing in itself - usually he's jumping to be the center of attention. Somebody dropped Philip off at the school to meet us, but we ran into him as we were coming out of the school after the conference. He dropped us all off at home and then was off to work. Finally, the day slowed down.

The boys and I had various leftovers for dinner (meatballs, cottage cheese, carrots, grapes), and the fridge is pretty much cleaned out now. That was my goal, as I'm planning to make a turkey dinner tomorrow night. The boys are excited about the sweet potatoes the most, I think. I bought a small turkey breast yesterday at the commissary on a whim, and we'll celebrate St. Patrick's Day with that instead of the traditional corned beef. I'm not a huge beef fan, and I haven't a clue how to even prepare corned beef anyway. Turkey is easy, and we'll all sleep well, too!

I just tried calling Philip at work (something I don't do terribly often, I should add) to remind him to inquire about some paperwork we're waiting on (veterans' bonuses, etc.), but he wasn't available right then. He's off "pulling an exercise." I swear, it's almost ridiculous how much fun he has working nights up at STRATCOM. He runs exercises all the time, and what that really translates to is this: he pretends to be a bad guy (he prefers that to being the good guy) and runs all over pretending to be a threat to security. They pretend their radios are guns, etc.

He's still such a kid. :-)

I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas Eve!

The baklava I just bought (and cracked open on the way home!) doesn't expire until 6/13/06.

Wow. That's mildly unsettling, that is. Still, it's sooooo good.

Wal*Mart was really not that bad today. We dropped off Philip at Runza, filled up the van with gas, went to WallyWorld, bought our twelve things and returned home in less than an hour. I am happy with that.

I did three loads of laundry between 11pm and 3am last night, so our clothes are good to go. I'm washing our bedding right now, and I'll probably wash the boys' tomorrow while they're playing with new toys and things. They'll sleep on them the one night, but then the bedding will still be pretty fresh when we return home again.

I'm off to make sandwiches for lunch and then start some cookies for Santa. We're heading to church at 3pm, so there will still be plenty of time to finish things up for Mr. Claus later on, too. :-)