Five or Ten Things

I have five pictures, so we can start there, and if I think of more things to add, then so be it!

1. Already thought of one!  My cousin is getting married today, so at four o'clock this afternoon, let's all send them prayers of happiness.

2. I am so glad that the first two weeks of school are four-day weeks.  The packing-lunch routine is already wearing thin.

 3. The paperwork...the five dollar contributions, the checks for field trips...did I mention the paperwork?

 4.  A pleasant side effect of reading Leslie's blog is that you notice hearts everywhere.  This was ranch dressing that I'd dumped out after the kids abandoned it and the carrots.

 5.  Embroidery...hard to make personalized Christmas gifts on the sly around here.

 6.  Go ahead and blame this on Jodi.  My granny square itch just had to be scratched.  I rationalize this by saying that it's a great way to use up all the stray balls of yarn that I have, and yet I find myself thinking that I need to buy just a few more colors so I can finish it up...it's not really stash busting if you are simultaneously adding to the stash.  I have 18 out of 81 squares done, so this will be a while.

7. We went to Trader Joe's last weekend.  We don't go there all that often--usually only when we go out to eat at a restaurant that is in the TJ's shopping center.  And Rob usually buys mostly snacks.  This time I bought the dark chocolate covered espresso beans.  Yum.  The kids couldn't understand why I wouldn't let them eat any.  Really.

8. I have jumped on the pinterest bandwagon.  I had to open a twitter account in order to get into pinterest, so now I'm on the twitter, too.  I don't tweet, but if you're on there (or pinterest), feel free to friend/follow/tweet me (whatever the lingo).  All I've really done on pinterest is just re-pin others' pictures.  I haven't put any original things up there.  It's a nice inspiration board, I guess, and another potential time-suck.

9. My youngest child will be turning eight on Tuesday.  Eight!  Where did the time go?  And why has returning to school made him so wild and out of control?  Is it because he has to be well-behaved all day at school?  So that when he comes home he's just used up all his self-control for the day?  He really has me yearning for a return to the 7:00 bedtime.  Eight years old.  Wow.

10.  Hey, I made it to ten!  This week Erin wrote a post about how busy she's been in the kitchen.  And Tsh at Simple Mom has a meal-planning chapter from her latest e-book available for free download.  I took both ladies' posts to heart, and I have planned our menus for the next 12 days.  I entered the meals in my google calendar, and I am going to make double batches of some of the meals to freeze them for later.  Once the scouts/dance/baseball train starts rolling in a couple of weeks, I'm going to need some easy meals!