Long Lines and Good Deals (A Weekend of Ups and Downs)

This weekend flip flopped back and forth between fun and exasperating so many times that it made my head spin. It was super busy and full of family activities, which is exactly what weekends should be.

Saturday started with another cleaning of the garage. I'm not sure how it happens, but every few months we realize that more things have migrated out there and now we can't find anything. Part of the problem is the fact that we are still trying to figure out how to maximize the 900 square feet we live in. My best idea so far: turning the dining room we only used ONCE since October into a playroom. It's fabulous to have our living room back! Since we had done a pretty thorough job of getting rid of all the unnecessary things we were storing in November, we really just had to put things in their place, which only took about 45 minutes. Yay for a clean garage! We also set up our computer in the front room and attached it to the TV. I never realized just how tiny the monitor was until I was reading my email on our 40 inch flatscreen. While getting everything cleaned up on our external harddrive, we encountered a bit of a problem. We're still not sure how, but we somehow lost every video I had taken of Brenden since he was born. I was crushed! Thankfully I have some of them saved online and we found a program to use to backup all of our information. A good lesson, but a hard one to learn.

That evening we were headed to Buffalo Wild Wings to celebrate my brother's birthday. My mom decided to come down early so she could check out glasses at Eyemart and she decided to tote Brenden along with her. They both had a great time and my mom found some pretty stylish glasses. After a nice long nap for Brenden we headed out. Even though our little boy was in a completely foul mood that night and refused to sit still or eat anything but ice cream, we had a great time. Brenden played with Meredith's nephew Cooper and ran around like a madman, flirting with girls and trying to wash dishes in the back. Hopefully being a dishwasher will only be something he pursues as a part time job in high school, not his lifelong ambition.

On Sunday Mike and Connie invited us to go to a consignment sale with them at the Expo Center, which is right down the street from our house, and my mom and Justin decided to come as well. I had heard about this consignment sale from a few people and I was really excited to go. Apparently I was the only person who knew exactly what the consignment sale was for because Mike and Connie were shocked to not see any fishing equipment whatsoever. (FYI: it was all baby things...hehe) We still found some amazing deals and walked away with a ton of summer clothes for Brenden and some toys. Our best find was a My First Leap Pad, with 5 books and a backpack, for only $20. The one thing we didn't find was a new stroller. Why would we need a new stroller? Well, remember my mom went to Eyemart the day before? Somehow after putting Brenden in the car she managed to drive off without it. I told her it was fine and that I was glad she didn't leave the baby, but she was still upset. I was pretty confident that the stroller was still at the store, and my mom was even more confident that someone had taken it and we would never find it.

One of his new toys...it neighs and makes clip-clop noises. He loves it!

His Leap Pad...already a pro.

He REALLY loves doing dishes. He pushed his car over so he could reach the sink!

Checking out at the sale took longer than shopping. The line wound from one side of the Expo Center, all the way back to the other side. The people pushing laundry baskets, empty strollers, and trash bags full of things were not at all happy. Truthfully I was impressed with the efficiency of the checkers. Once we made it to the front, around 40 minutes later, we were checked out in no time. With that amount of people buying that insane amount of things, 40 minutes was a miracle!

We headed back to the house to put away all the toys and wash all the clothes. My mom needed to get back so she could get dinner ready for my dad and on her way out the door we heard a loud BOOM! The glass in our front door fell out, all in one piece, and somehow managed to miss everyone's toes. I'm just glad that Brenden wasn't the one who opened the door. I'm sure it would have been a disaster. Tim toted the big piece of glass outside and was about to lean it against the garage when suddenly it shattered into a million pieces. When we rushed outside to help him, thinking he was probably cut into a million pieces as well, we found him laughing. The glass must have been tempered because the little pieces it broke into weren't jagged and Tim was just fine, although shocked. The funniest part was that we could still see the outline of Tim's foot in between the pieced of broken glass on the ground.

After a quick dinner that night at Taco Cabana, we decided to brave our Neighborhood Market Walmart. This is when we encountered the 2nd set of long lines of the day. I'm not sure why but checking out took almost as long as it did at the consignment sale. Tim eventually got into a self checkout line and got us out of there, and it wasn't a moment too soon. Brenden was definitely ready for bedtime.

Monday morning I woke up feeling like I had been hit by a truck. Nauseous, headache, dizzy, weak...it wasn't a great morning. Tim came home and let me stagger back to bed and my mom came that afternoon so that Tim could get back to work. She ended up taking Brenden back to Eyemart to pick up her glasses where, low and behold, they were holding the stroller for her. Even if they hadn't had her name on it, they would have known it was hers because Brenden made a beeline for it and started squealing. She was shocked they still had it, but I reminded her again that I had not been worried.

Cheap clothes and no broken toes...I'd call that a successful weekend.