Feeling better

Wow, I just read my last post and I was really in a mood. Let me be absolutely clear - I RARELY feel that way. 

We had a really nice weekend. It was father and sons. The campsite is only about 20 minutes from the house which meant that Chris and the boys could come home and sleep and shower. How nice is that. While they were out that evening I planned on taking Dana, Emma and Derrick out to dinner. I wanted to go to Applebees, but when I drove past the parking lot, it was packed. I decided I didn't want to wait 30 minutes for a table with Derrick needing to run around. We can do that when we're all together because I have Chris to help, but alone, I don't think so. So since the mall is right there and I was planning on buying a dress for Dana (this child grows like a weed), I decided to just eat in the mall. Well, the food court in the small (yes that's what they call the small mall here) was, well, it left something to be desired. There were not a lot of choices, not like what I'm used to when going to the mall. We settled on the pizza place. The pizza was OK, which is really all you can expect from a mall pizza place. I decided to try something different and had the lasagna. Mind you, I wasn't expecting much, it was terrible. It tasted like a really bad cheeseburger with ricotta cheese all over it. I mean the closest thing to Italian seasoning was a little raw bell pepper sprinkled on top. Ketchup would have improved the flavor immensely. I didn't want to waste eating carbs on such crap so I picked out most of the pasta and ate the bland hamburger and cheese and tomato sauce. It really was the worst lasagna I've ever eaten. While we're eating Derrick looks over and sees the big picture of the ice cream cones at the A&W place (I know, we should've eaten that). So he starts saying he wants ice cream. I'm such a pushover. I got them ice cream on the way out. I managed to convince him to wait until after we went shopping. That was certainly a small miracle to convince the two year old to wait for ice cream. 

So we started looking for dresses for Dana. There really are only two stores in the mall that have children's clothing, Sears and Dillards. I was sure that Sears would have dresses. And they did, but they were all fancy Easter dresses. They were really nice and were on clearance, but I needed just normal church dresses. We then went to Dillards, same thing. While walking back to the food court to get the ice cream before leaving the mall, we walked past a western wear store that had children's clothes. I thought we'd give it a try and see if maybe they had some dresses or even a skirt. Nope. But - shocker - they had really cute boots. Ok I knew what I was doing when I went into the store. Dana and Emma got pink boots and Derrick got plain brown. The kids all love their new boots. I so wanted to buy some for myself. But I think I'm going to wait until I can fit into some hot jeans before I do that. Really reward myself for my weight loss, ya know. Anyways, still no dress for Dana though. So we got our ice cream and headed back to the car. Amazingly the kids did not make a huge mess with the ice cream cones on the way to Target. They almost finished it before we got there, but they couldn't take them into the store. They were so sad to have to throw them away but they did. Target amazingly had dresses that would fit Dana. That's one thing this town is in short supply of is children's clothing stores. The stores that are here, do have children's clothing, but when you're looking for something specific like a dress, and you don't want fancy Easter or Christmas dresses, that's when it gets a little tricky. Maybe I just don't know where to go yet. Or maybe I just need to start looking online. 

So on Saturday Dana, Emma and Derrick and I were just getting ready to leave to go to a birthday party when Chris, Calvin and Bradley show up. Chris had stopped and bought a PS3 on his way home. Now before you assume he just went out and bought it spur of the moment, we had talked about it. I just wasn't expecting it quite yet. He's been talking about building another computer, a mini computer, to put next to the TV and access all our movies that we have stored on the main computer in the office. We have something of a library of movies in it. Anyways, he's been pricing that out and trying to figure out what he wants to put in it before he does it. He realized the PS3 would actually be cheaper and would do everything he wanted it to do. I have to admit, it's pretty darn cool. 

The kids and I went to the party while Chris set up his new toy and the boys were supposed to clean up the house. We had a great time at the party and met some people from the ward. We came home to find Chris had his new toy all set up, but the boys had really dawdled on the cleaning and were starting to lose privilege. They ended up losing a whole week of privilege. That means no TV, computer, or video games. Really sad to have lost privilege when we just bought the PS3. Maybe next time they'll fold the clothes instead of sit there. Yeah, it's not like we were asking them to do heavy labor. Just get the clothes folded and put away. They spent at least 7 hours doing what should've taken less than one. Oh well, hopefully they learned their lesson. I think I need to have them fold clothes every day this week too so they can get over their apparent phobia.

Sunday was really nice. Chris and I were both called to teach the Sunbeam class. That's Emma's class. She was so happy and sat on my lap the entire primary time. She did really good to sit on her chair during the class time, but during primary, whenever I put her in her chair she would lay her head on my lap and then snuggle really close and then the next thing I knew, she was in my lap and I was wondering how long she had been there. She may never recover from having me as her primary teacher. Especially next year when she is moved to an older class and Derrick is in my class. That will be hard for her. But Chris and I are excited to teach the Sunbeams. I think it'll be a lot of fun. The class seems like a nice sized class and appropriately behaved for that age. The hardest thing about it is going to be that church is not two and a half hours here but the full three. So we will have them for almost a full hour in the classroom and the lesson takes all of five minutes to get through. I think we'll be playing lots of games and doing lots of craft projects. Wish us luck!