A Day of Books

This weekend I was up in Pennsylvania visiting my parents and going book shopping with my mother and youngest brother, Stephen.
We started at the local library book sale where it was a Dollar a Bag day. Best book sale day EVER! When you go in, the "cashiers" hand you a plastic grocery bag. However many books you can fit in that bag is $1. Let me tell you, my mother and I have got the bag packing down to an art. Such an art, in fact, that I actually start to feel pretty bad about getting so many books for so little money. Usually I just shrug the feeling off and am just thankful that I was able to get so many good books. This time I didn't get that feeling, but I decided to request a third bag even though I was perfectly fine with just two. So I paid $3 for all of the books in the picture below instead of $2.

Not a bad haul for $3 if I may say so myself.

Next up, the Salvation Army store. They were having a 50% off everything in the store sale. I didn't get anything other than books. Yes, I only bought eight books there, but they didn't cost too much considering the 50% off deal. These eight books cost me $3.59.

Not too shabby.

And last but not least, the crowning achievement of my Saturday search for books. I have been collecting Trixie Belden books for years, but haven't found any in almost as much time. I've looked on eBay multiple times, but always ended up turning away mainly due to how much each book cost. Plus, on top of the winning bid, there is always shipping costs. Anyway, I normally wouldn't spend $6 on a used book, but in this case, I definitely made an exception.

Total tally for the day...55 books for $12.59. I did a pretty good job. Did you get any new books this weekend?

Mullet Alert

I know that there have been a number of mullet sightings made by my Facebook friends in the past year, but I have to admit that this is the first that I've seen in a very LONG time. I had seriously begun to think that perhaps I was correct in my hopes that the mullet had gone the way of the dodo. Extinct. No such luck. This mullet sighting took place at a Hardees in Pennsylvania. Just after leaving the library book sale, Mom, Stephen, Brooklyn and I stopped for brunch at Hardees. Here's what we saw.

Here's the backside.

And a side shot.

It is quite terrifying, isn't it. Have you seen any scary haircuts lately?

Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm beginning to find humorous, the fact that I'm starting to be as busy as my friend Hannah. Hannah is a Mary Kay consultant and she is very involved in her church. We tend to email each other about 8-10 times each day while at work and at least once a week I'll ask Hannah what she has planned for the week and she'll answer back with the longest list in the world! I used to tell her that I had no idea how she managed it all. Then, this past weekend came along and I understand a little bit better. Let me explain.

My typical weekend consists of me going home after work Friday afternoon and either making something for dinner or (more likely) just sitting down on my laptop and unwinding from the long week. Saturday finds me cleaning my house up a little and doing laundry and Sunday is church, of course.

This weekend, however, was much different. After work on Friday I went home as quickly as possible to let Rocky out of his kennel for the time that it took me to get him his medicine and to let him outside to take care of business. Once Rocky was taken care of, I put him back in his kennel and headed up to Pennsylvania for a Tastefully Simple party at Heather's house. The party was starting at 6:30pm and I was leaving my house about 4:15pm. I honestly had no idea of exactly where I was headed. Sure, I had directions, but I've never been on 70W or 81 N by myself before. I did make it to Heather's in time. In fact, I was about 20 minutes early. Very nice. I had the backup plan of staying the night at Heather's, but didn't really want to leave Rocky home alone since Joseph was with his best friend Tres and Tres' family at Sakura (a Japanese steakhouse) for Tres birthday dinner and I didn't know what Titus was doing all night. I left for home about 8:30pm from Heather's and made it home in two hours. Got my dog from the basement where he was hanging out with Titus, took him outside, and after making to my bedroom with Rocky, promptly crashed on my bed and didn't wake up until 5am when Rocky needed to go outside. Took the pup out, and went back to bed. Thankfully, I slept until about 9:45am. Amazing! Then I kinda just did the laundry and hung out around the house. Tres and Somer came over around 4pm and we all did pretty much nothing until it was time to leave for dinner. (Joseph is exactly one day younger than Tres so their / our families always celebrate their birthdays together.) We had planned to go to Joe's Crab Shack but upon arriving there we learned that the wait time for four was one hour and twenty minutes. Instead we walked across the parking lot to Logan's. Much better choice. Within twenty minutes we were seated and being waited on. After dinner we stopped at Best Buy where Joseph purchased the entire Guitar Hero World Tour set. I actually got a new piano music book there too! yay!

We must have gotten home about 10pm but the boys still broke out the game and put it all together. Somer started off on the drums and Joseph was on the guitar while I started my HUGE pot of Can-Can Chicken for Sunday. Eventually, while my rice was cooking, I took a turn on the drums and did a lousy job of it too! Went back to my food, adding the chicken to the mix then headed back over to the game to sing along with Titus' guitar. yeah! That was much easier. Once my dish was finished cooking, I packed it all into the fridge and headed to bed. It was about 11:15pm. Didn't fall asleep until after midnight.

Woke up on Sunday at 7am to get ready for church. I had totally forgotten about the time change. That was a wicked morning! Got my food into a crockpot and loaded up my truck.

I made it to church quite early with enough time to make sure that the crockpot was plugged in and that there was enough water in there to make sure the rice didn't burn. Of course, Sunday school and the main service was on time. Then the Celebration banquet started. When all was said and done, I left church close to 2pm after having been there since 8:30am. It was a great time, but long. (most Sundays aren't even close to that long and we didn't have an evening service yesterday.)

I ended the day with a trip to Barnes & Noble with Titus where I picked up three new books. One book of retold fairy tales, one fantasy fiction, and the third a suspense thriller by my favorite author, Dean Koontz.

What a weekend! I don't know if I could handle being that busy all the time, but it sure was fun!

Seeing the "Hobbit Hole"

Alicia spoke of our parents house as a hobbit hole so I figured I might as well show you a little of what she meant.

This is the girls' room. Imagine three girls in here. Where the dresser is now, was where Alicia's bed used to be. That blue chair with the plastic bag on it... there were two dressers back to back there for Rachel and I. Alicia's dresser was in the corner that you can't see to the right. The ceilings in the house are about 6 1/2 ft. high which is why it seems as though I was holding the camera really high. Everything is really just super short in order to fit properly.

This is the "playroom". Well, it used to be anyway. Now it's more the TV room. The entire left wall (that you can't see) is a floor to ceiling bookshelf that is two layers of books deep plus books piled on top. Way back in the way backs, Mom used to correct our school books in this room. The love seat wasn't right there to the right. Instead, there was a desk and a shelf of school books.

This is the living room. The door to the left straight ahead leads to the attic. That's the playroom ahead there too. Mom's piano, that will be mine someday, is right there in the front left corner of the picture. This room is long, but not much else. Where that table is by the piano...that's where Mom's Christmas tree goes.

The kitchen. The last time the whole family fit in there at the table...I don't even remember it. It's tiny, but homey.

Another angle of the living room. That's a little more of the piano.

Thanks for coming on the tour. I obviously didn't show the parents' room, and the boys' room, but I'm sure you get the idea that the house is...SMALL.