A Weekend To Be Thankful For

I went into this Thanksgiving weekend without any real plans, but it ended up being a very steady and wonderful weekend.

The basic rundown including main points in bold for the quick read and regular print for details:

Thanksgiving Day:

1. Slept in. Cue the choirs. Ahhh! Ryan got up early and went shooting with the men on both sides of the family. From what I hear, they had a really great time. Ryan purchased several pumpkins and squash and loaded them with some explosive targets to make things even more exciting. They even helped my little brother Asa hold the gun and shoot. I think it probably made his day.
2. After waking up, I made a pie for Ryan's side of the family. But it was so quick and easy, and it looked so amazingly delicious, I decided to make one for my family too. I knew they didn't need an extra pie, but since it was more of a desert pie (Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Pie) some of my siblings would be pretty happy about it (mostly Sabrina who would do anything for Chocolate.)
3. After completing one pie and putting it in the freezer, I took Dodger for a 2.5 mile walk around the track by the high school. It was a beautiful day! So very different than last year! Last year Necia and I signed up for the "Earn Your Turkey 5K" but when my alarm went off that morning it was literally 3 degrees. Weather report said it would be 5 degrees by the time the race started. No thanks. This year the weather was absolutely perfect. I would have joined the run this year, but I can't really run and I didn't want to spend the money. So I just took Dodger for a walk of roughly the same distance and called it good.
4. Stopped by the grocery store to pick up more pie ingredients for the second pie.
5. Went home and made said pie. By then Ryan was home. When I finished the pie, we took the first one over to my parent's house to say hello to everyone and wish them all a happy Thanksgiving.
6. Ran back home and made a big tossed green salad for Ryan's side and headed over for dinner.
7. Ate said dinner. It was delicious, as always. My personal favorite? My brother-in-law's sweet potatoes. I never liked them growing up but whatever he does makes them taste like pumpkin pie - but better. It's awesome. It was a beautiful feast, but due to my 9 month pregnant belly, I only ate one plate of food, which is actually a good thing. I had a small slice of pie with ice cream. This was the celebrated ending of my sugar free month. So delicious!
8. The goal after dinner was to go play games with the in-laws, but once dinner was cleaned up and Ryan sat down on the couch, he was sound asleep and snoring within minutes.
9. We went home and I busied myself with cleaning and organizing projects. Ryan discovered a TV series on Netflix called "Jericho" that pulled some good attention. It was actually really good. I watched it here and there as I worked on things.
10. Getting ready for bed I had a great deal of anxiety because I had originally been scheduled to work 06-18 Black Friday but had decided earlier in the week to get rid of it. I have not wanted to get rid of any hours lately because I want every hour of PTO I have to be with the baby. But Ryan originally wanted to go to Cabela's at 3 am for Black Friday, and as "unfun" as that sounded, I wanted to go with him. But we decided not to go, so I was feeling a lot of anxiety about giving away my hours for "no good reason." As always... I am so glad I did.

Black Friday:

1. Slept in. Originally woke up around 5, not on purpose, and then again at 7:30. I thought about trying to go shopping then, and maybe going to work out. I spent some time pacing around trying to decide what to do. Ryan convinced me to come back to bed, and by 9:30 when I woke up again, my anxiety about giving up my shift and having "nothing to do" was gone.
2. Dragged Ryan to Burlington Coat Factory and Babies R Us. He was actually a very good sport about it. Our goal was just to see if we could find a decent deal on a diaper bag we both liked. I found one online that we both liked, but we still wanted to see it in person if possible and check out what else was out there. Burlington had the one I found online and we both agreed we liked it, but decided to go to Babies R Us just in case since Burlington wasn't having any special deals and I found that particular bag online for less. (Funny enough I think that bag was the one we registered for without even realizing it.) We did, however, buy a new winter coat for me. Sweet! Babies R Us happened to be having a 30% off all diaper bags sale and we found one there we liked even more. With the discount it was cheaper than the one I found online. Done deal! It is an Eddie Bauer bag, which Ryan was a little embarrassed by simply because he didn't want people thinking we were snooty and needing name brand stuff. All I care about is that it is well made and that we both like it.
3. Drove home and walked to the mall. I sent Ryan to Sport's Authority to see if they had any decent deals on tennis shoes for him while I went to The Children's Place to buy a few gifts for friends. We met back up shortly after and went back home. (No luck with the shoes. Their special "deal" was buy one, get one 1/2 off but all the shoes were regular priced so it was way too expensive. Better to wait until they have a real sale when the prices are much better.)
4. Went home and prepared Fred and Jari's Christmas present. I was afraid that the post office might be really busy with people trying to get things off in the mail, but it wasn't bad at all. It was a big relief to get it off well ahead of time. I sent them a text letting them know that it was coming and that they were more than welcome to open it since there was no reason to wait.
5. Went to Costco. I thought this would be the most daring thing I attempted that day. Costco is always insanely busy, and I figured with it being Black Friday that things would be even worse. But probably since I waited until the afternoon, it was smooth sailing. In fact, I think it may have been one of the smoothest trips I have even made. In and out with very little hassle and virtually no wait. That meant I got my favorite cereal with a coupon, frozen fruit for smoothies, and some stocking stuffers. Excellent.
6. More cleaning and organizing.
7. Dinner at Ryan's aunt's house with his family and my parents. This has become a Thanksgiving tradition as well for his side, but instead of it being a normal dinner, this is the infamous steak and crab night! His uncle's Christmas gift to the family is to bring up fresh Alaskan King Crab. It is the only time any of us eat it - mostly because it is so expensive in a restaurant and it's never as good. You would not believe the size of those crab legs! It is quite the feast and his family has been wonderful to invite my parent's and the other in-laws in the family.
8. Played games after dinner.
9. Went home and went to bed.

Saturday:

1. Cleaned the church. This was the first time that I can recall being able to participate in this. It's been our ward's turn before, but I always forget. It was really nice to be able to go and join other members and help get things cleaned up. It's interesting how you don't really think about it day to day. Each Sunday you come, you meet, you leave. But it does get pretty dirty with all the people coming and going and activities through the week. I was put in charge of dusting the chapel and the foyer. Ryan helped to vacuum. We had a pretty good group show up, so it went by quickly. It was a great experience.
2. Taught piano. I would have liked to have taken piano off and enjoy my truly "no work weekend" but earning some extra money is never a bad thing, especially when it only takes about an hour and a half of my time.
3. Went to Target to "re-register." The baby shower was over a month ago, but since then I received a 10% off coupon for items left on my registry. Truthfully, in the moment I had no idea what to register for. And now that the shower is over and I can see what things we still need - things I wouldn't have thought of beforehand - I wanted to go back to Target and see if I could add things to my registry. I tried it Friday night online, and sure enough, it let me do it. The coupon is great and all, but you can only use it once online and one day in store. There are still a ton of things on the registry that we don't want or need, but I figure it's better to be prepared if we get the chance to go in for our one-day shopping spree.
4. Went home for some more cleaning and organizing.
5. Went to Necia's to help take apart the crib. The moment had finally come for the crib to come down and the toddler bed to go up. Ryan, Bill, Joey, and Paxton all helped in taking the crib apart while I started to wipe it down. Isabel was a little confused when she saw pieces of her bed appearing at the bottom of the stairs. "My bed!" she kept exclaiming. Necia explained, "No, this is the bed for the new baby. This is Diana's baby's bed." Isabel responded, "Oh..." as she thought about it, then quickly added, "My bed!" Necia tell said, "We have a new bed for you. You get a big girl bed now." At that her face lit up and she was just fine to see her crib be taken out to the car.
6. Went to Lowe's and Wal-mart. Lowe's was mostly window shopping. But we did buy a nice little book shelf for the baby's room at Wal-mart. I love books (obviously) and inherited quite a few children's books from my parents. They have just been sitting in a box for the last several months, so I really wanted to get a shelf for them. And it gives me an excuse to keep my eye out for other great children's books. :)
7. Stopped by Burger King on the way home. Nothing like classic American crap food after a couple days of amazing real food. ;) However, I must admit, their fries have greatly improved in the last little bit. They are much bigger and thicker - like a real french fry. But I think they also went through a salt bath. I found myself scrapping them off because there was so much of it. You win some, you lose some.
8. Went to a concert with my mom, sisters, and niece. It was put on by my mom's good friend and daughter. He played the piano and sang a few songs, and then accompanied his daughter who has an incredible voice and was a delight to watch. She sang a mix of theatrical songs, which I absolutely loved. It was also priceless because this concert was at a retirement home, so most of the audience was elderly men and women. One woman in particular kept loudly asking us questions through the performance. She kept asking repeatedly if my mom was the mom of the girl performing. No matter how many times we said no and pointed out who the mother was, she only became more convinced that no, my mom was the mom and we simply didn't know what we were talking about.
9. Went to Jamba Juice.
10. Went home and put away all the newborn and 0-3 month clothing. Ryan in the mean time had put the bookshelf together and most of the crib frame. With these items in the room, we began trying to decide where to put things. It's a good size room, but it is difficult because ideally, I would have liked to have the crib along the east wall. However, that's where the window is and because we live in an old basement with single paned windows, it lets in a considerable draft. (Ryan has since put insulation board in the window and we will put that plastic sheeting stuff up to keep out the draft). But the crib couldn't go there. And again, ideally, I would have liked to put the glider rocking chair in the northwest corner, but that is a door to the man cave. Due to the fact that almost all the walls are concrete, in order to make the basement into a 3 bedroom apartment, they had to add a wall and keep the existing doorways, which means going through the baby room to get to Ryan's man cave. I stood in the room and debated and debated. Ryan, who was watching Jericho, came in and measured all the room and furniture, converted it into the metric system, drew the room to scale on a piece of paper, and cut out smaller pieces of colored paper for me to move around the paper and figure out. I decided on two options, but we didn't move anything else that night.

Sunday:

1. Did not sleep in.
2. Showered, got ready for church, ate breakfast, etc.
3. Went to church.
4. Ate lunch.
5. Went visiting teaching.
6. Took a nap.
7. Went to my parent's for dinner.
8. Decided to test out option A for baby room design. To my surprise, it fit much better than I thought it would. So well, in fact, there was no reason to try option B. Just like that, everything was in it's place. Not everything is completely organized. I still need some storage bins and things like that, but everything is set up. It looks awesome.
9. Went to bed.

It was a wonderful weekend. Busy, but not insanely so. Just steady. It felt so nice to get things done and to make real progress. It was really exciting. I am so thankful for Ryan and all of his help. He has been amazing. Dodger has been a great sport, though he has been anxious about the moving around. Each time we moved something in the baby's room he had to come inspect it. In fact, when I came home from the concert, all he wanted was for me to hold him. If I tried to help Ryan he would whine and cry and paw at my leg or arm until I picked him up. Poor thing. But now that things are more settled, he seems to be doing just fine.

Only 2 weeks and 2 days until due date. Crazy!