Weekend Madness

What a weekend. I need another day just to recover!

Saturday was my annual scrapbooking convention. For the last 5 years, I've gone to one every year. It is so fun. I take classes and learn new techniques and get motivated to scrapbook more at home. I went with a friend from church this year. I had pretty good classes, not the best I've ever had. They also have a ton of booths where you can buy every scrapbooking gadget you can imagine. I normally can spend quite a bit. But I haven't been scrapbooking much this summer and feel like my supplies are already overstocked. So, I think I ended up spending less than $10. Wow--pretty impressive.

North Carolina uses the first weekend of every August as "Tax Free" weekend. It is supposed to be for people to buy all their school supplies and save a little bit of money. But, it applies to a lot of other things besides paper and pencils. So, my friend and I decided to take advantage of it and stopped at a HUGE mall outside of Charlotte. I made up for all the money that I DIDN'T spend at the convention by spending a ton at the mall! They have a big Old Navy, a Gap outlet, and a Children's Place outlet. So I got a lot of clothes for the kids really cheap. This mall is so big that we've been there 5 or 6 times, but there were still parts of it where I'd never been. And to my delight, one of the stores that I didn't even know was in there was a SKECHERS outlet. That is probably my favorite brand of shoes. And they were having a buy one, get one 50% off sale. I was in heaven. I got two CUTE pairs of sandals on clearance.


We didn't get home until 10:30 or 11 pm. Andrew had a fun day with the kids at the Children's Museum and our mall here. He's such a great husband to give me free days like this. When I got home, he told me that our Primary President's husband had called and she was in the hospital. He wanted me to know that she probably wouldn't be in church the next day. It was her week to do the Sharing Time lesson, so I figured I would need to take over. I had already decided what I was going to do for my turn next week, so I just figured I would do it a week early and everything would be fine. I didn't realize how hectic it would turn out to be.

Here was my day on Sunday: I went to change Whitney's diaper when she woke up and found that there were TWO diapers left in the house. In my 5 years of parenting, I have never let us run out of diapers! What a time for a first--the Sabbath--when we don't go to the store! Then I needed to print some pictures of animals off the internet for my Noah's Ark game that I prepared for sharing time. I spent about 10 minutes finding just the right clip art. When I went to print it off, it wouldn't work. Aaarrrggghhh! My patience was beginning to run thin. I grabbed some children's magazines, dressed myself and the kids, and ran out to the door, hoping I would find some pics of animals in there. On the way out to the car, my shoe broke. Hello! That never happens. The strap with the buckle on it completely snapped off. I'm glad it happened before church so that I wasn't stuck with one shoe the whole morning, but still...why today??? I changed shoes and we were on our way. I hurriedly got things set up at the church for my Sharing Time lesson, missing the first ten minutes of sacrament meeting. Bummer. My friend who usually helps me with the kids during church was late, too, and wasn't able to save a seat for all of us, so I was on my own with the kids for the most reverent hour of the week. They did pretty well. After sacrament meeting, I hurried down to the Primary room to put the final touches on my lesson and realized that out of the nine teachers that we normally have for Primary, SEVEN of them were gone. Oh, great. Two of them had arranged for substitutes, none of the others had. I ran around trying to get people to teach at the last minute. (I'm so thankful for willing volunteers.) Oh, and to top it all off--we had a visitor from the Stake Primary Presidency there to observe. Unbelievable. I was SO ready for a Sunday afternoon nap by the time we got home.

I talked with my Primary President in the evening and she was at home. The doctors think she had extreme heat exhaustion. I was glad to hear it was nothing more serious.


Tomorrow is Whitney's appointment up at Duke. I'm SOOOO hoping that we're done patching. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.