Chessssnxxxzzzz

See how I turned Chess into a snoring word? That's because I spent my day at a chess tournament with Andrew. The good news is that he won 3 of 4 rounds and I made considerable progress on Nephew Blankie. The bad news is that I was stuck in a building with hundreds of unsupervised children (whose parents may even actually have been there, but were not exactly supervising) who did a lot of yelling and jumping and bumping and rolling. One kid even had a scooter inside. And, since Drew is young, games in his division are over pretty quickly. So, from 8:00-2:30, he played a total of, maybe, 45 minutes of chess - at the MOST.
Anyway, hubby made considerable progress in his tasks as well and the porch floor is now primed. Yes, folks, that is the very same porch that I started painting last fall.
What with our trip to the mountains coming, we had a lot to do this weekend. Perhaps I should explain that we are going to stay in a cabin with Chris' family to celebrate Thanksmas. I cannot take credit for the term, as a friend of ours does this with his family. But I did totally steal it. We don't like to travel during holidays with the kids. If you have ever done this, you certainly understand why. And his parents live a good 15-hour drive from here. With flying being financially out of the question, we invited his family to join us for holidays. They really want to spend their holidays with their parents, as their parents are aging quickly. So, they used to come here before Christmas. Like, a week before. And stay for the week. They would sometimes leave on Christmas Eve. And, since they wanted to watch the kids open the presents they bought, we would pretend it was Christmas two days before Christmas, which can kind of ruin the effect of actual Christmas.
Anyway, Thanksmas has evolved as our tradition. We meet close to Thanksgiving to celebrate it and Christmas on neither of those particular days. And we meet at a cabin because it's halfway.
So, getting back to the lots-to-do, we have to round up some (cheap) warmish clothes for the kids as they have outgrown all of theirs from last year, and I have, uh, undergrown all of mine, so I needed some too. And we decided it would be most efficient to eat out. So I changed into something cleaner, and smelling less of sweaty, cooped-up kids, and we did all of our junk and ended up at Super Wal Mart at 9:15 this evening for our weekly grocery spree. Normally, I do not take the kids out with me this late. But they were in the car already, and it seemed like a good idea. Besides, I have to make a cake tonight in celebration of my brother's 30th birthday (which we will celebrate tomorrow, also not on the actual day of his birth) and I didn't want to waste precious minutes backtracking to drop them off at home. .
You need to know that I was wearing a black leather jacket and black boots. With dark jeans no less. I felt kinda badass. Chris told me I was more cute than badass, but....I don't care (she said, rebellion gleaming in her eyes).
My brother is getting a gun for his birthday. Hm. I hope he doesn't read this post before tomorrow afternoon. So, I bought him some ammo and a gun cleaning kit. And here, I must say that I felt super badass leaning over the ammo counter and placing my order, then walking through Walmart at (by now) 10:30 PM with a box full of .45 caliber ammo, wearing my black leather ensemble. Then Chris and the kids rounded the corner and I remembered that I am mostly cute. Oh well.
You know what's sad? Most of my adventures seem to happen at Wal Mart in the middle of the night while grocery shopping. I'd say I need to get out more, but mommies don't get to do that. And that's part of what turns us into cute mommies.

DAILY BLISS: making homemade carrot cake and laughing so loud in public with my family that we drew (ahem) attention