bluebear

Thank you!

I'm back to work this week after spring break last week, with 5 more weeks of school left after this week. I always like to have productive breaks, and we did a lot of stuff, but no really big projects. But that's okay. We got 65 bags of mulch, and maybe about half are spread. But, I did get a new car! That really wasn't needed or planned, but sometimes things happen. I had picked out what I wanted, and planned to purchase in the fall. But then I saw that the factory started shipping a new color, and that's all it took. So I found one in my state with the features I wanted, and checked the site every day until it arrived. Then showed up first thing the next day! I didn't need a car, and I feel horribly guilty, but I love it.

Oh gracious how scary! Glad you are okay. We had another tornado hit our county this morning... 2 Mondays in a row now.

We're having a rainy day today and tomorrow, with the potential for severe weather. Again. We had a tornado in our county a few miles from here on Monday, and scary weather a couple weeks before that. I'm about over it! Glad for the actual rain though. This week is our spring break. We have a list of things we want to do. We bought 30 bags of mulch today, and will likely get at least 30 more. Ugh.

Oh my goodness how precious! Congratulations!!

Yay March. I was very sick last March, with a hospital stay early April, so I missed spring. Very much looking forward to that this year!

Happy groundhog day! Our local groundhog also saw his shadow, so 6 more weeks of winter. This has already been a winter-y winter for us, so I'm not surprised. And 10th Happy Birthday to my grandson! Woohoo!

January was an eventful month. I'm hoping for a calmer February. My husband got sick on the 2nd, and ended up being sick for 3 weeks. My son was in an accident (he's okay!) on the the 6th, so we've been dealing with insurance and towing and car repair places. Next weekend I guess we're going car shopping. He's been able to use my car for the last 4 weeks. About 5 days later part of his phone stopped working, so that was more insurance. We've had TWO snow events this month. We haven't had measurable snow in about 10 years. Snow was on the ground for a total of 6 days. We've missed 4 days of work due to snow/ice, and 1 holiday. And during that, I developed a bad rash, but was unable to leave the house to go to the doctor. That's a lot for one month!

My department has been allowing some positions 1 remote day a week for about 10 years. I've been in that group for 6. We were told from the start that this was a privilege, and if we had a meeting or some other obligation, we had to come in. Sometimes, people will still take meetings virtually, but in-person meetings are much easier for me. So I will still come in. However, I live 2 miles from work, so it's easy. A few years ago, my role was slightly different, so there actually were things that I had to put my hands on to do. Currently there isn't much, but it could change. Plus, sometimes you just need to see people. But it is nice having some time without people and interruptions. (Plus, I share a trailer with 6 other people, and sometimes they are very talkative and distracting! ) Our HR department frowns on remote working. We started this years ago before it was a very common thing. I fully expect at some point we will lose them. Oh well.

I just put my phone on "Night Mode". I wish I knew how to do all the extra manual fancy settings, but I don't. With Night mode, it does take a few seconds to take the picture (about 5), so you do have to be still. Mine are still a little smeary. I imagine I could put it on a tripod, but that would take some setup, and I'm too lazy for that!

Happy New Year! It's a beautiful night out tonight, and there so many stars out. Also Mars and Jupiter are showing out.

Nope. I get excited when I see them go up too.

Merry Christmas! Hope everyone had a great day!

It took 7 days, but my house is decorated. 3 full days, then 4 nights after work. Whew! I'm taking tonight off, but wrapping will start tomorrow. I really need to start on my baking and candy making as well. But like others, I just can't get into it yet. It still seems too early for food stuffs.

I buy a new washcloth every year! Just one.

I have made good progress shopping. Some people are about done like my 3 kids and 3 grandkids and husband. Others, like my mom and step dad and sister, I still have no ideas for. I have not done any wrapping. I use my son's room for wrapping, so when he leaves on Friday after visiting for Thanksgiving, I'll set up the table and bring all the wrapping supplies out. Also, I am an "even number of presents to open" person. So I sometimes wait to wrap some things, to see if I need to put 2 related things together, or wrap them separately. The last several years I have done pretty good with keeping up with wrapping though. One year, everyone was waiting to open presents, and I was downstairs wrapping about 15 presents. Yikes. So I'll never let that happen again! I'm ready to get started though, and get them out of my son's room and under the tree! Which isn't up yet.

My Aldi never got the Christmas cactus, that I saw. I've got 2 so I didn't really need them. They did get poisettias though, but were $3.99. My first thought was, they should be $.99 at Home Depot soon!

I remembered seeing it in yesterday's email. I looked first on the main GD site, but then realized the BF site would be more relevant.

https://gottadeal.com/black-friday/bath-body-works-black-friday-offer-revealed-444482

We have given both my mom (73) and MIL (76) Aura frames. They love them. My MIL especially loves seeing new pictures show up. And they have sales regularly. They are also available at Kohls and Amazon.

Husband has a few power tools on his list. I had been looking at the Home Depot B1G1 deal. Yesterday he mentioned needing some more batteries. That happens to be one of the qualifying items, so then I got another tool from his list free!

This is great. Thank you!

There's a few things I may venture in for. If I can make myself leave the house, and grab my patience on the way out. Gift cards and Xbox cards, batteries, food chopper, maybe toys, zip lock bags, almond bark...

My husband had already canceled ours before it renewed. He wasn't able to use the code either. I may sign up under my email.

My mom got my boys some Levi's, and by the time we remembered at 12:30 a lot were sold out! I didn't have anything on my list, so I started scrolling by category. Came across some good prices on drones so I grabbed one of those for my husband. Now that I'm off work I can spend a little more time looking around. I don't have a lot on my list, so I'm just making it up as a go along depending on what I see. The danger in that, and these early deals, is that I keep buying until Christmas, even after I say "I'm done"!