The Whirlwind Weekend: Girlfriends, Pedicures, Vampires, and Lunch

The weekend has finally ended. I have to admit, we need more Thursday holidays that are steeped in food traditions and gathering to be thankful. I vote for a quarterly Thanksgiving to keep us all grounded. Really to me the weekend was just epic. I started early in the week with some tea and conversation with a girlfriend in the evening. Sometimes it's nice to slip out of the house and have conversation at a coffee shop. We opted out of the meet for a drink because that's just our personality, we needed to vent, we needed warm drinks to fill us up. The chatting overflowed. Oh and there may have been a peppermint brownie involved. I was also fortunate enough to drag a friend along grocery shopping with me, Wednesday evening. Yes, the night before Thanksgiving someone was dear enough to join me at Whole Foods. Talk about that's what friends are for. She's a keeper.

After a wonderful low key Thanksgiving Day with my family, I snuck off with a girlfriend to see New Moon on Black Friday. You don't need my review, although I will tell you I really enjoyed it. It inspired me to actually finish book three and four. Which I am not abandoning like I did New Moon, I'm hooked. Did I just say that? Believe it or not, if the movie and tea weren't enough my weekend of reconnecting was not over!

Saturday afternoon, after my husband returned from a 45 mile bicycle adventure, I went off on my own adventure. Pedicure time. Picked up a friend and hit the foot spa! Although I am not to sure about paying for pedicures in the winter. I have this instinct to show my toes and with cold weather, that's not happening. So now, I'm not wearing socks or slippers around the house and my feet are cold. But my toes are pretty. My pedicure was topped off with a dinner with friends. Good food and laughs, our doggies all playing together just topped off the great weekend.

Believe it or not with all the socializing and going out I had all week, which was more than the last three months combined, I had plans on Sunday. ME?!? A lunch date with the most fabulous group of coworkers a woman could ever ask for. Seven of us, all met for lunch. It had been years since I had seen a few of the women, a few months for most of them. We all taught together about eight years ago and have kept in touch after all of us going our own ways. Out of the seven of us, not one of us still remains at the original school that all brought us together. It's hard to capture the feeling of being with old friends that you spent your work day with. They know you in a different way, they see the professional in me, but also the caring teacher, the tired teacher, the good and the bad. Now we have children and just can't believe where the time goes. Here we are, all eyes open, no! Lots of laughs trying, YES!

To top off this weekend, I stayed up until the wee hours working on presents from a photo website. Now, I need some tooth picks to keep my eyes open, the lack of sleep is definitely catching up with me.

To all my friends that graced me this past week, thank you. You all have an incredible way of warming my heart and keeping me grounded in life. To those that I didn't see because of travel or other plans, next weekend is open ;-)...I'm always here.

Load Up The Family, We're Going To Staples!

Earlier than usual my doorbell rang. The rumble of the delivery truck followed. My girls exclaimed, "a package, a package". We're big fans of early morning deliveries around here, unless it's something work related for my husband. But on this particular morning, an envelope was sitting on the landing of our porch.

The girls were disappointed to see me holding an express envelope. I opened the envelope and found a gift card to Staples.

I was anticipating this gift card to arrive at any time now. I was delighted. I had spent the last week, perusing the website, trying to hone in on what I would buy. After visiting the website a couple of times, I will admit, I was surprised by the selection of electronics and variety of items that Staples carries. Every week Staples offers new deals on their website. Cameras, printers, cell phone accessories, GPS, teaching supplies, computers, art supplies, and of course the essential supplies to keep my home running smoothly.

This may make a few of you laugh, but I truly adore office supplies. When I was a teacher, I would create wish lists of items that I would love for my classroom. Of course, like many teachers on pay day I would treat my class to supplies for us to use. But now I'm home with my girls. We spend a lot of time doing crafts and activities. My first grader has truly blossomed as a writer in the past couple of months and she seems to go through notebooks weekly. I love special pens, highlighters, notebooks to keep recipes organized, and photo paper to make quick prints just seem perfect. Truly I could go on and on about my love for all things office supply related! Maybe I was an office manager in a former life.

Knowing how teacher's classroom budgets are shrinking, I sent an email out to my daughter's teacher asking him if he had any special requests for supplies he could use in the classroom. He was thrilled with my offer and did ask for some card stock. They make a lot of books and card stock is essential for the covers of the books and keeping it bound together. I was delighted to fulfill his request.

One of the top items on my list to purchase with my gift card was a new printer. I have a 8 year old HP photosmart printer that works great for everyday forms, recipes, and maps, but I wanted something more. Last year I borrowed a friend's printer that had a scanner as well. I loved it. I think about my files and books of pre-digital photos and wish so often I could have them in iPhoto for projects or just to reminisce. I started looking at All-In-One printers at Staples. I've had luck with my HP, so that helped narrow things down for me. I can't believe how much printers have evolved over the past 8 years! Finally I decided on the HP C4780 for the features and Staples awesome price, it was on sale so I couldn't pass it up. I also picked up some ink, HP makes XL ink cartridges which can handle over double the printing projects, so now I don't have to worry about having my Holiday Cards printed in a lab. I can print my cards right at home!

After shopping online, making informed decisions from home, I even took a trip into Staples to have a look around. Then the following evening after dinner my husband, girls, and I all loaded up into my car for our shopping excursion! If you could only hear the conversation on the way over about the notebooks, erasers, markers, clay, sketch books, and various other items the girls couldn't wait to find.

As you can see, we did quite well on our visit. We even came home with an item I didn't expect for my husband, an item from the as-seen-on-tv section, the Iron Gym. Hey, I asked everyone to pick out something they wanted and that was his choice! I told you Staples has everything you could possibly need and even a few laughable surprises. I'm off to see what they have brewing for their cyber Monday deals, I can guarantee there will be a couple of items I won't be able to pass up.

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Disclosure: As a contributor to Silicon Valley Moms Blogs (Rocky Mountain Moms), I won the gift card to Staples. I was simply asked to write about my shopping experience. I couldn't have been more thrilled to be the lucky winner, thank you SV Moms and Staples for the opportunity!

Giving Thanks...

Colorado pulled out a warm 60 degrees today, a gift to us for Thanksgiving Day. J and I were sitting out back on the patio, watching the girls playing ball, swinging on the swings, and just being kids. Our girls play well together, which we never take for granted. J looks at me and said, "we have a family". It was cute. Sometimes you just have to take a moment and appreciate the wonderful way life unfolds.

When you've spent half of your life with someone, it's easy to just go through the motions.

Today we did the exact opposite. We relished the moments. Even though holidays are an opportunity to be surrounded by friends and family, this year we took a step back. We spent the day together, just the four of us, cooking and hanging out. J is dancing right now with the girls in the living room. If only I could record a moment of the screeching and laughter. Pure joy.

I'm thankful for so many things in my life. I'm thankful for the screeching pouring down the stairs and the puppy we adopted in July, that just plopped down on my feet trying to escape the dance party. I'm thankful for the opportunity to spend some time with our family out of town before the year ends. I'm thankful for friends that call, email, write letters, text, and make time for me in their life. I'm thankful for my husband that is still dancing even though he cooked a fabulous meal and cleaned up to top it off. I'm thankful for holidays so my family can spend time together just simply being present and loving one another (which means I'm out of here!).

I hope you had a wonderful day, full of delicious food and laughter. I definitely didn't forget, I'm thankful to those of you that will read this, very thankful most of you have become friends and I just adore that. Big smiles.

Wordless Wednesday: Gobble, Gobble...

Craft idea compliments of Family Fun

Sunshine, A Caterpillar, and A Surprise Ending...

One unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon, I was earlier than I anticipated to pick up my daughter from school. The commute is a bit of a crap shoot as far as traffic is concerned, so I tend to air on the cautious side. I decided to drive through Eldorado Canyon and take a walk with my youngest daughter, GL. I've been visiting this same trail for over 15 years. It's one of my favorites, a very soft approach, just a small incline, a hand built bridge that crosses a creek, and plenty of trees to provide a bit of reprieve from the sun.

Early afternoon sun is the favorite part of my day, it's the peak of the heat. Especially in October, afternoon sunshine in Colorado is something that just lures you in. The sun's rays whisper to you like a spoon dripping with honey, soak me up.

Vitamin D deficiency, not in Colorado.

As we were heading off towards the bridge, to hang our feet and watch the falling leaves cascade down the creek, I noticed something on the trail out of the corner of my eye. It was fuzzy and moving slowly. I stopped mid trail, a little cloud of dust dispersed and I looked down to see the most interesting caterpillar. We are gatherers in our family, we find something interesting in nature, we collect it. We have a policy to always return it. GL requested we bring it to share with her big sister. I obliged. But we promised to return it the next day.

Little wiggly, ticklish, squirmy caterpillar joined us on the rest of our hike. Joined us in the car. It escaped a few times and I found it once crawling on the passenger seat. Sj was delighted with our find, she called it Mother Nature's treasure. We discussed the details of it's safe return to the exact location the following day.

When we arrived home, we built "Catty" a proper home in an old jar. We added some rocks, dirt, water, a few branches, leaves, and grass. As always, with any treasure we find the caterpillar spent the night on the girls' night stand.

Although we awoke to a bit of a surprise.

Catty didn't sleep that night, Catty must have been busy all night. Catty literally transformed in a 8 hour period. We woke to Catty, in her new form:

The fibers of the chrysalis were clearly Catty's former feathery self. If the light hits the chrysalis just right you can see the body of Catty, flesh tone like a skinny worm. Gone is her beautiful plume to create her next stage of life.

Enter my dilemma.

Catty was discovered in October. From what I've gathered on lovely websites such as Joyful Butterfly, the chrysalis phase is only a week or two long. Not a month or two. So I now sit here in regret, knowing Catty curled up and died in a Peppermint candy jar from Cost Plus World Market. This may sound silly, but I just don't have the heart to let her go. Instead Catty sits on a bookshelf in our living room.

Yes rather odd, I know.

I just can't help but hold out hope that just some day we'll wake to a beautiful butterfly...