TGIF

Today is Friday!! We survived another week and we are looking forward to a nice 3 day weekend with the boys having Monday off due to parent/teacher conference's. G is so looking forward to his birthday this weekend and I am to. It will be nice to have family here but I have to say I'm amazed that my baby is turning 7. Seemed like just yesterday he was a baby.....I just have to make the cake tomorrow night and we are pretty set for the party. I got the carpet cleaned this morning. It didn't help a whole bunch, it needs to be replaced, but it smells better and is bit cleaner.

It was very nice that when I was done with the carpet, Steph was here with Donuts...YUM!!! We have breakfast together nearly every day. I get the boys to the bus stop, take my morning walk and then Steph and I hang out for an hour or so, depending on her schedule. Most mornings we just have coffee, well, I drink de-caf tea, but we sit and drink, talk, and it's a fun way to start the day. I was worried about having someone here all the time, but I have found I like to be social, more than I thought. One day a week, usually Friday's since it's her lightest day, we eat something. Sometimes I'll make some muffins or she will make omelets, but this morning she had to take her boyfriend to the airport so she was gone very early. I thought we were going to have to skip our breakfast today but she came in about 10am with donuts. They were so yummy!!

Dh had a great time at his hockey game and I'm made at myself for being so upset with him when I saw what a great time he had. In the end it turned out to be a good night for me as well. Steph was here a few minutes after I wrote my admittedly semi-whiny post. We had a good time. We all played Fish together and she kept them entertained while I got the dinner dishes done. After the boys were in bed we played Scrabble, shared some wine(I had a tiny glass since I'm not supposed to be drinking) and watched the hockey game on TV. Dh was home about midnight, all excited about the game and the fact that the wings had won. He was also thrilled that his boss let him take his truck home because it was so far out of DH's way to drive from the arena after the game, all the way back out to the office to get his car. Steph watched the boys while DH took me for a mini drive in the truck before we went to bed. It was really cool, with seat warmers and everything. The seat warmers feel odd because your butt is warm but the outer parts of the seat is still cold. We weren't gone very long but it was nice to have another adult in the house so we could just pop out for a few minutes(this has come in handy quite a few times)

While at the game DH and his boss talked only a little business which DH said was actually kind of nice. They talked some more about Steph's schedule and ideally they would like her to work 5-10 pm on the days she has school and then the two days she doesn't have school she would work 2-10pm, and then as needed on the weekends. So while DH and her would technically be working together, they wouldn't be in there all the time together. I was worried they might get sick of each other but if they are only working together basically 6 hours a week, I don't think that will happen. Both of them are excited at the thought of working together. The company is doing really well and growing super fast. Dh was lucky to get in when he did.

Yesterday the weather here in Michigan was GLORIOUS!! It was more of a early fall day, instead of late fall day, it was in the 60's warm/sunny. Steph was done with work and home by noon. She was heading to a local coffee shop to study and I tagged along. While she studied I window shopped and spent a wonderful hour walking through a book store. I walked home from there, about 3 miles, and it felt really good to walk in the sunshine, and enjoy the fresh air. I feel so much better now that I've been walking every day but I worry what I'm going to do when it gets too cold to walk.

I've been trying to stitch every day. My stitching slump seems to be over and I'm excited once again to pick up a needle. I'm trying to do the 2006 Cherub for myself but I find that my wrist, arm and hand are all starting to hurt when I stitch. I try to take frequent breaks(15 mins out of every hour I'll do something else, like dishes or laundry, or something like that) but that wasn't helping. I have one of the support gloves for my wrist/hand but when I use that, it then makes my elbow hurt. I'm wondering it it's because I didn't stitch for so long and that maybe things will loosen up in a little while. It's frustrating to have the urge to stitch and all this time to stitch and then to have it hurt.

I saved the best for last.....DH IS GETTING A BONUS!!! The numbers came in for the 3rd quarter and they were good so he is getting a bonus. It's not very big, only a couple of hundred, but its something and will allow us to buy some thing for the boys for Christmas. I was so worried about it and Dh told me to just have faith and it will all work out, and it has. We also think we can take some of the money from my part time job in December to add to it so we should be able to Ok for our boys this year. What a huge relief!! I doubt we wil have money for gifts for each other or for other people but the boys will be Ok.

In the same meeting Dh's boss thanked him for coming to the game and for working as hard as he does, even though he often doesn't get paid for it being on salary. He said that they have noticed how willing he is to help out in any way he can and that they would talk about more money again after the first of the year. At the end of the meeting he said to Dh to take me out to dinner over the weekend and he'd pay for it. His boss has done this several times and it's really nice to have him do that. I was thinking we would have some McDonalds or something for lunch tomorrow while shopping for the last of G's gift, now we might be able to have something a little better. We bought an entertainment book from the school last month for their fundraiser so we are going to go through the book tonight and pick a place out. So that should teach me, when ever I feel down, I should just wait a little bit, and things will pick up.

On one sad note. The boys play with two little boys from down the street. Their Dad is in the National Guard and he has been called up for duty. He leaves on Saturday for training first in New Jersey. They are having a fund raiser to raise money for the soldiers to come home during Christmas and go back before being deployed to Iraq I think early in 2007. DH and I wrote a check for it last night. It's not nearly as big as we would like, but it's something. The boys were saying there Dad will be gone 18 months. I can't imagine........