Ahhh Thanksgiving.  A little extra time off, good food, visiting, and the rush to figure out the rest of the Christmas gifts I need to purchase.  Avery met a few more of My Favorite Egg's family Thursday and today.  The weather was quite decent for the time of year.  Thank goodness as today's get together was in Bedford.

As many times as I've driven past Ed's Steak House, this was my first meal there and I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised.  My steak was delightful.

Since today was the last day any sane human being goes out in public to shop before Christmas and we wanted a Boscov's fix, we loaded up and headed north to the closest mall that has a Boscov's.  We found a few gifts, not too much and I at least got an idea for my Favorite Egg.  Avery loved the lights up high in the mall and we were sure to call out to Santa before we left.

I snagged a flyer out of curiosity.  $35 for 1 5x7, 1 3x5, and 2 wallets with Santa?  Sheesh, what a racket!  But you know it is a must, so I guess that will happen at some point, forcing me back into a mall after Thanksgiving.  We will need to book with the picture people again, who also happen to be in a mall, so I guess it's inevitable.

I know my dogs well.  I have systems and habits in place to avoid things I don't want them doing.  Really it's my own fault when I don't follow these procedures and they do what they do.  As I do each morning now, I ran to take Avery to daycare - it can be less than 10 minutes unless I stand there hugging on her or talking to one of the workers.  I returned to find things pulled from the small trash cans and throughout the living room and computer room.  *gah Danika!*

The extra grossness is that she adores tissues - pulling them out and shredding them.  It's cold season in my house, so a few cans are full of My Favorite Egg's, as my mother used to call them, snot rags.

Why was she given free reign on this occasion?  Because after I put them back in the bedroom from their trip outside she woke My Favorite Egg and he brought them back down/out and left the bedroom door hanging open.  I was too lazy to add "wrangle dogs back up the stairs and into the room" onto my pre-departure to do list while tending to kiddo.

Often people close to me will challenge this one saying, but if you're only gone for a little while you can't let them have free reign?  No, no I obviously can NOT.  She's enough of a jerk about this that just being outside mowing the lawn Danika will pull things out of the trash cans.  Thank you for the reminder that what I do I do for a reason and not just because I'm uptight and mean.

Food auctions - I fell in love with them in Jingletown, well at least the auctions that also had food.  There was one here today not too far away so we headed there after a lazy Sunday morning.  Nothing like 3 mangos, 2 caramel apples w nuts, two 1lb+ packs of flavor injected chicken legs, and two packs of 1lbish pork chops for $11.  We didn't get to stay long as it was chilly in there and we had the baby or surely our haul would have been larger.

Even though we weren't gone long we came back to a poopy mess, thanks Obama Dani.  So she needed cleaned up.  I scooped the yard too so My Favorite Egg could mow (one last time).

It was a productive long weekend, but I'm so not ready for it to end.

My day "off".  Let's see here.  I did get to lounge a little while longer in bed, but since I was up for an hour at 3am and 7am to feed the _sick_ baby and pump, lounging wasn't as awesome as sleeping would have been.  I wanted to hit the closest Ollie's which is about 20 miles away, so we packed up and headed out.  I didn't find anything amazing, but it was right next to a Giant Eagle, so I also stopped and did some grocery shopping.

I've gotten two loads of laundry washed (but not away) and the dogs brushed (that means the critters in our neighborhood have something to line their winter nests with).  The upstairs tile (bathrooms and laundry) rooms have been swept and are waiting for me to wash them.  The fur in the house on the first floor is waiting to be vacuumed and I wanted to scoop poop so I have a shot at mowing one more time.  But here it is almost 3pm, so I need to start figuring out dinner.  *sigh*  When do I get to cuddle and console the totes adorbs even though she's sick baby?

I've always posted the first day I needed to scrape my windshield.  I guess I can once again smile and be super grateful to have a usable garage.  For sure today though if my car were outside I would have needed to scrape.  Can you believe it took until well into November?  We only got what looked like a minor attempt at sleet the same day it snowed a little in Jtown.  The leaves are still clinging to the trees here too - which was not the case as we had gone up the mountain last weekend.

I know the cold must come, but I am going to celebrate every ray of sunshine I get.  Speaking of which, it's warmed back up again today, or at least into the 50's which is still pretty decent when the sun is shining enough to need sunglasses.

I ran out today to renew my concealed carry permit.  Of course the sheriff's office here is only open (like many) 9am-4pm and is closed tomorrow while I'm off.  So I got that in motion before swinging in to quickly buy more clothes for the little one.  With her being unusually small I don't have warm enough clothing for her in those sizes - go figure.  At least she is officially too big for some of her very first outfits.  She's growing, slowly, but she's growing.

It is shocking how much we rely on clean water flowing from our faucets.  I had guessed it was from the heavy rains, but it turns out it was simply a failure in filtration at one of the water pumping stations.  Either way I'm living with a boil water advisory.  So I can't use the ice from the ice maker or use the tap water for consumption without boiling it.  I'm lucky I had a couple of gallons of water downstairs for drinking purposes.

The bigger issue is cleaning bottles. So for tonight I just boiled a pot and sterilized the bottles that way.  I also boiled two other pots full to have water for the dogs tomorrow.  But this leaves open questions.  They say not to even use the water to brush your teeth... so can I shower?  I mean, I am still feeding kiddo and the water would be on me.  I guess I need to return to having an obscene stockpile of bottled water in the basement to avoid some of these issues.

The biggest surprise was I found out via text and email from the water company.  It's nice to know they don't assume everyone is glued to the nightly local news on a daily basis.  Hopefully they'll text when the issue is resolved as well, but in the mean time I'll be peeking at their website throughout the day.

The pounding rain didn't stop us this morning... and I'm glad it didn't as it stopped shortly after we left on our way to Jingletown. Of course, it had already done it's job derailing a car ahead of us on 70, so we were stuck in traffic for over an hour while we waited for the accident to be cleared.  This meant we got there way later than expected, but we still had quite a few people able to join us for a bite at El Jalisco, for which I am so grateful.  I can officially say Avery has been to Jtown and got to meet the Laws, the Rohannas, Jon and Heather, and Beff today.  More importantly we got to do some catching up.

The drive home was very uneventful.  I didn't do much but I'm bushed today.  Probably because my eyes were open at 5am, so not only did I not take advantage of the extra hour of sleep but I even got up an hour even earlier.  *sigh*  When The Walking Dead is over I'm showering and wiping out.