Laundry and Groceries

Well, my house is a wreck, but I've gotten so much done in the last few days that I can't possibly feel guilty about it. I've been going thru every single drawer, cabinet, and closet in our house and throwing things away. The trash dudes more than earned their paycheck at our house yesterday. I think we had 12 bags of stuff out there, and there's more in my van waiting to go to goodwill. Then two days ago, I started my washing machine and it sounded like it was gonna take flight. I'm afraid to run it because I'm afraid it'll overheat and start a fire, so I went to the laundry mat yesterday afternoon. I figured that way I could also get caught up with the nightmare that was Mt. St. Laundry in my basement (at least I now have a basement to house the mess away from sight). So 16 loads and $41.00 later I have no dirty laundry, except what we've worn today, in my house. Did you know that laundromats don't use all quarters no aways, at least not ours. You put cash into a machine and it spits out a card with the money on it to insert in the machines to start 'em up. Pretty cool! The cool part? I got 16 loads of laundry done in less than three hours!! Yes, it's rather embarassing to actually admit to all of blogdom that I had 16 loads of laundry, but oh well, most of you don't actually know who I am anyway, and if you do, then you hopefully love me anyway, despite my many opinionated quirks!

I went grocery shopping today, as the cupboards and the fridge were nearing empty. Shopping for me this time of the year is dangerous. I come home with things that I would normally frown at and never, ever buy. For example, currently living in my freezer are two boxes of Blue Bunny ice cream sandwiches...one egg nog flavored and one peppermint flavored. The boys each had one, different flavors, and I tried each one of them, yum! Then of course there's the ingredients for the peppermint hoho cake that I'm making for this weekend at our toy drive and for two weeks from now when Smart Guy's family is coming to our house for Christmas. There's also ingredients for two pans of gooey butter bars (chess bars for my southern girls) with the addition of walnuts and milk chocolate chips in them, scotcheroos, sopapilla cheesecake. I also discovered Starbucks earlier this week. Yah, I know, most of have already been doing the Starbucks thing for years now. Personally I feel so guilty spending the money that I've always steered clear of the place, but the other night after Prophets dentist appointment and D.K.'s swimming, the five of us met at Starbucks for a treat. Prophet got iced coffee because he thought that would feel good on his numb mouth. D.K. got an eggnog-latte, Smart Guy got something with hazelnut in it, and Bee and I got a peppermint mocha to share. Yes, I let my children all have coffee that night. Anyway, the peppermint mocha is awesome, so I came home and recreated it here. So, I bought all that stuff today and I now have the ingredients for that in my kitchen too. Oh, and I bought a new coffee pot! The one we got the day Smart Guy moved into married student houseing almost 14 years ago, is huge and not welcome on my counter top anymore and the one I got for Smart Guy a couple years ago that has a water- thingy on the back of it to make one cup at a time, leaks all over my counter, so it's also been banned. So, I bought a little 4-cupper to sit on the corner of my counter top. I also have 6 boxes of candy canes awaiting the Christmas tree and too get crushed up on top of the peppermint hoho cake.

Well, we are expecting some snow late this weekend. Probably nothing like Inkling, Ang, and Temera seem to be getting, but something at least. We've got a very busy Saturday planned... pictures with Santa, council meeting, toy drive, and something that's escaped me at the moment. I hope everyone's having a good holiday season so far! Later!