Weekly Update: Tacky Sweaters, A New Couch and Real Estate Revisited

November 30, 2009 by starrball

CCO Pink Girls Night
Last week CCO had a girls night (the baby was the only boy lol). The theme was pink, we all wore pink and they had pink flowers, pink napkins and cups, pink drinks, pink cookies and even pink rice crispy squares

We played ‘the best game ever’ which is a paper version of telephone. Each person writes a sentence at the top of a piece of paper and passes it. The next person has to draw the sentence as best they can, then thy fold the sentence back so the next person sees only the drawing. That person has to write what sentence they think the drawing might be, and so it goes. Some of them were pretty far off, it all depends on the person’s drawing mostly. I don’t know if it is really ‘the best game ever’, these people like to say that about a lot of games They also had rockband. To make it pink the band members all had to wear pink feather boas and tiaras I’d never played so eventually I gave it a shot but we weren’t very good, we only made it all the way through one song (if you’re really bad it’s game over). Also I learned playing guitar is really hard on the wrists…

New Couch

Last week the in-laws bought a new couch. At first I was very reluctant to see the old one go because I had discovered it was the perfect for nursing, better than a bed because it dipped down in back making the perfect angle. The new one also converted to a bed, and thus dipped down in back. It is just as good, and it looks much more stylish to boot. Plus now DH can sleep on an actual bed when he ‘sleeps on the couch’ (he old one was no good).

Summit at the Gathering
‘The Gathering’ is CCO’s weekly mass and fellowship event. Last week this consisted of a time fo adoration after mass, similar to the summit. I was nice to have it in the bigger more ornate church, and it was an opportunity for some other non-CCO people to enjoy as well. One lady who was not with us had a powerful experience before the Lord. She asked us to pray for her ick husband, and mentioned how nice it was to experience something like this. She especially mentioned the music and wanting to share it with her husband, and since I felt exactly the same the first time I went to the Summit, I just hope that she can find us again.

Real Estate and Budgeting
The other day the in-laws had a realtor in to re-assess their house should they want to sell it. DMIL wanted a new quote after the upgrades she had made. After they discussed things we talked about what we (DH and I) were looking for for a house. He gave us a website and we filled out a profile to receive house listings that fit our criteria by email, but we didn’t get anything yet. I expect it takes a while to get into the system etc, someone would have to read over our input and probably enter it manually into their database. He also said that the best time to buy is the spring, because that’s when most people list their homes and we would have the greatest choice. Since we’re looking at a fairly small market (homes under 100k and not in a trailer park) this is probably the way to go, which means we’re looking at buying 6 months sooner than we had planned (unless we wait till the following spring and I’m not sure any of us want to do that.

Given this shorter time line, I think we’ve got to get a bit more serious about saving up some money. We should have money to put away each month but it seems it’s all disappearing. I took a bit of a look at things and while some of it has been Christmas presents it seems a chunk of it is going to Walmart I usually go with DMIL when she goes shopping because it’s nice to get out of the house but I always end up buying things I didn’t know I needed, so I really have to watch that.

On Spending Time with my Toddler
As I mentioned I’ve been working on spending time with my toddler. I started out great then I don’t know what happened, but it hadn’t happened since… I guess I’ve just gotten engrossed with photos again, because they pile up and I try to keep on top of it. However, someday far from now when I look back on these years, I’m not going to wish I spent more time going through photos on my computer. I have to try to really keep this in mind. (This prompted the walk in the rain).

On Taking Walks with a Toddler:
After our walk in the rain I realized that I should really take him out more often (it had been a week). For one thing he isn’t nearly as much trouble when he’s outside, there’s somehow less for him to get into, (or these things are just farther apart). Also, while walking the same place gets boring, going for a walk with a toddler never gets old, because they are always finding new things to discover. They see the world differently, it’s always an adventure. So, I should take him walking every day!!!

This was my thinking yesterday, but when I took him for a walk today it was kind of boring. It wasn’t raining and the puddles had mostly dried up, and not enough had changed overnight, everything was pretty much the same as the day before. We did find a worm but I didn’t want him to hurt it, so after letting him touch it I returned it to the safety of the grass. It doesn’t help we pretty much walked the same path, next time we should go up the road. But I’m not entirely wrong about each walk being something new, he was on someones doorstep and playing with the doormat, which until he caused me to look at I had ignored, but which was actually quite interesting.

Tacky Sweater Shopping

(this is not me)
Saturday I went shopping for a tacky Christmas sweater for a party. There was nothing at Value Village but I found 3 options at Frenchy’s