Christmas Shopping

Yeah! Another week is gone :) I don't know what I'm counting down to, but another week is gone - LOL! Got up at 7am again, got kids off to school, got Jake going on school, and Jimmy and I went on a walk with Andrea. It was good! We walked at a pretty good clip, but slow enough to chat. It was perfect :)

After the walk, we went in the backyard of her house and hung for a while. Jimmy played with the toys in the back, and Andrea and I visited. Her father-in-law came out for a while and chatted with us, and we ate some apples from their tree back in Idaho. Good times :)

Jimmy and I headed home at around 11am. I found the kids a snack, then did some dishes. Dishes are never ending, you know -LOL! Soon it was lunch time, and we were making hot dogs. My neighbor came over to tell me that her and Mindy had got tickets for Twilight. 7:45pm on the 20th at the Tinseltown Cinemark. Sweet! They paid $10 online for them.

Andrea and I both installed Skype on our computers, and tested it out today too. Too funny. It worked pretty good :) She wanted to test it so that when Ryan gets to Iraq, they can chat over the computer.

At around 3pm, Andrea headed up to the school to pick up the kids, and I went with her. I just needed out of the house, kid free, for a half hour or so. Jake was good with Jimmy :) We went in and picked up the kids that were walking to the back.

See, the school sits right on the edge of the post. On the outside of it. So the MP's (Military Police) unlock the gate in the morning so the kids can get in, and unlock the gate in the afternoon so the kids can get out. But the Kindergartners and 1st graders are all supposed to be released to the front of the school. Not to the back gate.

SO, some of the Ft Bliss moms come to the classrooms, and pick up the kids who walk to the gate. Then walk the kids to the back gate, where the other parents come (on the Ft Bliss side), and pick them up. Saves time of going off post, then coming back on post through the check point. Tricky, eh?

Anyway, as I was helping pick up the kids from the classroom, the Vice Principal found me, and told me that he had talked to the speech teacher. They did a classroom observation for Joe, and found that they wanted to test him for speech. As for Tom, they said that his only problem was his "R" sound.

And because he was doing SO well in school, there wasn't really an educational need for Speech. BUT, that he could be referred to an outside speech therapist for help. So he wouldn't have to be special ed.

Andrea and I gathered up all our kids, and headed home. We stopped on the way home for her to pick up something from a friends house, and I made a call to the doctor, for a referral for speech. I got through in 20 seconds (believe me, it was a miracle), and actually got an appointment for next Friday. Can you believe it! hehehe.

We got home at 3:45pm, and got the kids a snack, and at 4pm headed to the park. Andrea came too, and we watched Kayleys kids while she did piano one on one with them (switching out 1/2 way). My neighbor girl (Leslie) came and hung out too. She's pretty cool!

AND, Adela and Katy came to the park too. It'd been FOREVER since I'd seen them. They've been doing their own thing for a while now, and we haven't seen them :(

The kids all played nicely, but there was sure a ton of them. I have 5, Kayley has 4, Andrea has 3, Leslie has 2, Katy has 2, and Adela has 3. Then, the Hunts from church rode their bikes over too, and they have 5 kids. Plus all the kids at the park who didn't belong to us. Mad house, let me tell you. And keeping track of them all was crazy too - LOL!

At 5:20ish, we headed home. Leslie invited me and the kids to come over to her house on Saturday for a "play" date. Should be fun!

I made pancakes and sausage & eggs for dinner. Mmmm, tasty! It was a quick dinner.

At 6:00pm, Jake had wrestling. We were a bit late, but got him there. Back him, and we did some chores. The house was a mess. After cleaning, though, it looked much better.

At 7:35pm, Jake called, and was ready to come home from wrestling. His coach said that next Saturday was his first meet. Cool! Captain America can take Jake and another kid while I stay home and do the Yard sale with the other kids. Busy, busy, busy.

Captain America got home at around 8pm, so making the 8:30pm movie wasn't gonna happen :) We'd go to a late showing. He ate some dinner, and put the little kids to bed, and we were off by 9pm. We drove to Tinseltown (Eastish side of town) Cinemark. The same place where I"m going to see Twilight. I figured that if I bought my ticket in person, I could get a military discount. And avoid the online fee. See, I'm tricky. Instead of the $10 that my neighbors paid, I only paid $6.50.

Of course, the movie that we wanted to see was sold out. But another movie I wanted to see, "The Box" had tickets. But we had an hour and 10 minutes to kill. We walked around for a while (dang, there were SO many teenyboppers there), but didn't like the "teen scene". And, can I just say, when did I get old? And what's up with the skinny jeans thing for boys. Come on. Really? You think you look good? You look like a girl. And that's just not right. Not right at all. Sigh. MOving on.

We came back to the car, and decided to go look for fast food to get a soda. We drove for a while, and found a Jack in the Box. Soda and a breakfast sandwich later (mmmm, breakfast all day long!), we were headed back to the movies.

I really enjoyed the movie. Captain Americadidn't really care for it. I found it to be a very deep thinking movie. I could see a lot of analogies to be drawn from it. But Captain America didn't like the message that he thought it was sending. And I could see where he was coming from. But I just looked at it a different way. I'll write real small in case you don't wanna see a spoiler.

See, there was this button that the people were supposed to push. They were presented with a choice. Push the button, and someone, somewhere, that you don't know will die. But you'll be given a million dollars. Captain America didn't like the concept. And the movie made it out like EVEYRONE pushed the button. LIke humanity was so flawed, that eveyone made that poor choice.

I interpreted it a bit different. Don't take it at face value. Replace the killing and the million dollars. People choose something that benefits them while being bad for someone else. LIke cutting someone off while driving. Cutting in line at the store. Bigger things, like stealing, or lying, or such. We push "buttons" every day.

One thing Captain America really didn't like about the movie, was once the button was pushed, you were stuck into a course of action, and couldn't get out. And I see his point. Life isn't like that. You can always change. You can always decide to do good. Maybe, though, if you took it as you can't "unring the bell" or unpush the button, though. You can't change your consequences. But unlike this movie, you CAN change your actions and choices.

Anyway, it was a very thought provoking movie. I enjoyed it. We sat in the theater and talked about it for quite a while, then sat in the car and talked about it after we got home too. And I guess that's the point of movies like that. To spark conversation, right? To get you thinking about things :) Mission accomplished :)

The movie didn't get over until 12:45pm, and we didn't get home till after 1pm. SO tired.... I'm hoping the kids let me sleep in tomorrow. Hoping, but not holding my breath :)

So as I'm sitting here at 1:30am, trying to figure out what to do for a WordArt freebee, Christmas shopping comes to mind. Do you take pics of your trips? We always do. But then, we take pics of everything. (Mom, the reason why there's been no pics as of late is because I lost the camera - shhhhh, don't tell Captain America! We've been using my cell phone camera and the old crappy camera........)

Click on the links below to go to my account to download the PNG file, and leave some love if you like my work. Thanks!

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