I'm becoming domesticated

Sunday night.  Tom was at work.  I had just gotten home from working at the gym.  I set out to attack all the cooking for the week ahead.  I've done this a few times in the past and really love it.  It's so nice to get home from work on Monday and only have to microwave dinner.  This week was a little different however.  For what is probably the first time in our marriage... Tom and I were both going to be home for dinner Monday-Friday this week.  Between his work schedule and my classes I honestly don't know when the last time we were home together that many days in a row was.

In any event, he was off Monday-Thursday and on day shift on Friday, so we needed dinner for the whole week.  The other complication, Christmas is this week, so there can't be any leftovers because we are going to be in NY for the next week or so. Here was the menu:

Monday: Turkey Taco bake
Campbell's Kitchen Recipe

Tuesday: Crock pot chicken lasagna

Wednesday: Cheesy chicken and rice with broccoli
Campbell's Kitchen Recipe

Thursday and Friday: Leftovers

I got the turkey taco bake cooked on Sunday and got everything ready for the crock pot lasagna (so that all Tom had to do was layer everything in the crock pot on Tuesday afternoon).

A glass of wine made all of this cooking much more enjoyable!

Play dough!

Last year I attempted to make play dough and failed miserably.  I wanted to have my kindergarten class make candy dishes out of clay to give to their parents for the holidays.  I foolishly waited until the morning of the project to mix the flour, water and salt together.  Turns out the recipe I had sucks... and my play dough was runny and gross.  I had to steal real play dough from all of the other kindergarten teachers so that I had enough to make the candy dishes (bc I had foolishly told my kids about the project already so there was no turning back).

This year I got a recipe from a college that involved many more ingredients and looked much more legit.  I was ahead of the game.

Tom and I set out to make the play dough... 

And it was a success!

The kids really enjoyed the project... The only person who was a little upset was Tom.  Apparently it was not clear that he would not be able to play with the play dough after he helped to make it.... 

Mud Runs!

So we might be a little obsessed.  Tom, Hannah and I sat down last weekend and registered for four runs for the spring, 2 in April and 2 in May so far.  One of the April ones is the first ever night time mud run in the US.  And its 7 miles long.  ugh!!!  what were we thinking?  The first one in May is in DC and is an obstacle course rather than a mud run.  Tom has been doing Cross Fit so he'll probably be fine (a lot of the exercises look like the obstacles on the website... like flipping a tractor tire, monkey bars, pushing a sled with weights on it).

Anyway... heres some pics from this years mud runs.

First mud run... before

..... and after.

Second mud run... before

...during.....

and after.

We're rich! for 24 hours at least....

Yesterday was pay day.  I have successfully put off paying our bills for the last 24 hours.  I HATE that almost all of our money is gone after paying the bills.  Especially today.  This pay check should be an extra one.  We both get paid every two weeks and this month we get paid twice!  I budget based on two pay checks a month so in theory this pay check is extra.

Our plan was to take the money and go to our timeshare for a long weekend in January (especially since we have not been yet....).  Then the leftover money we would spend at the outlets while we were in Williamsburg.

Plan failed.  Our credit card is stretched to the limit and luckily we are smart enough to know we should pay it down a little bit instead of going on vacation.  Hopefully we can still swing the weekend away and just not go on the shopping spree.

ok... need to stop blogging and start paying bills.  More posts later.

Christmas minus the tree

We still don't have our Christmas tree up!  Its doing a lovely job of decorating the basement, but not the living room :(  Last weekend I put out the rest of the Christmas decorations solo.  Tom was on night shift.  I got into the spirit a little bit, but still found it a little depressing to be decorating the house alone.

I refused to decorate the tree alone.  That would be too sad.  Plus, our Christmas tree is a little pathetic.  Actually, not a little, A LOT.  Its an old floor model from the Gap's decorations.  When I was working there, they got new trees and gave the old ones away to employees.  Half of the branches fall in a downward direction instead of being perky (probably from kids all hyped up on holiday treats trying to climb the trees in the store).  I did get a lovely box of handmade ornaments from when Tom was little that I am dying to get out and on display.  Maybe we'll decorate tomorrow morning....

3rd times a charm....

So my first attempt at blogging was over a year ago... it lasted about a year with a grand total of 13 posts in that time.  We can all agree that's a pretty pitiful attempt.  Over this last semester I had to do a blog about reading for a class at JHU and it has revived my blogging spirit.  I really hope this is a way for me to keep in touch with people I am not able to talk to everyday.  Laura- emails are great, but I miss telling you stupid little things about my day (for those of you who don't know Laura... she and I shared a door at school last year and now she lives overseas.... ).  So here it goes.  3rd try.  Keep your fingers crossed.