Great Day!

Today has been an awesome day!

This morning I got up early (for a Saturday) and CootieBoy and I headed out to Lowe’s to buy a new foyer chandelier and garage door opener. I ended up getting a slightly different chandelier than we thought, but it’s just as lovely (and only $168). I also arranged for Lowe’s to call about installing the garage door opener. What’s awesome is that they are running an installation special on openers right now – only $59 to get it installed!! And the opener I got was normally $200 and on sale for $168 (a popular price). So all told we did well on the home-item purchasing front. The only bad part was me somehow losing the folder I was given with all my installation information (not anything specific, but still stuff I would have preferred to HAVE. But somewhere between paying for the items and taking stuff out of my car at home it disappeared. Oh – and the other bad part was the lady accidently charging me twice for the garage door opener. I didn’t realize it until I was home – and I thought “Hey, I paid a lot more than I should have.” I looked at my receipt and sure enough – I was $179 over what I should have paid. So I went back and got that refunded back.

I also went grocery shopping to take advantage of triple coupons at Bi-Lo and Harris Teeter. I did pretty well, spending about $70 to get $180 in groceries. What’s awesome is I plan on taking a bunch of stuff to Disney so that it’s that much less we have to buy when we get down there and check in to the timeshare.

Disney is in a week, people. Yee. HAW!!!!

So once grocery shopping was done I took a quick shower and then we were off to take some kids bowling. Our lifegroup is working with a children’s organization and have “adopted” 7-8 boys all around the ages of 9, 10 and 11. Today only 4 boys were able to come bowling, but it was a lot of fun. Two of the boys in particular quickly captured my heart – I look forward to knowing them better. One of the others boys had a real attitude and was making me angry at some point. For instance, I bought three orders of fries figuring it was enough for everyone AND that we’d ALL SHARE. Well, he got put out that he didn’t get an order of fries just for himself. I explained the fries were for everyone – not just the boys but the adults too, and he got mad. Then I went and got two pitchers of water and he was mad it wasn’t soda. Then he wanted to play a videogame and was mad I wouldn’t give him a quarter. Very…sullen.

After bowling was done we took the boys out for ice cream at a nearby Baskin Robbins, and it was there that the counselor who drove the boys told me that the boy actually did not like strangers at all and that it was surprising he was interacting with us at all. At that moment I forgave the boy for his attitude, knowing that it was a big step for him to be dealing with me at all. And sure enough, once we were done with ice cream I went over to talk with him and he was very polite and when he accidently kicked me while spinning in his chair he quickly apologized to me. Baby steps. The fourth boy loved the big guys from our group and was constantly arm wrestling or bragging about how he was the best bowler out of everybody. Very funny. So next month I told the boys that we’d be taking them rollerskating and they were VERY excited.

And the bonus from today? A coworker had given me free passes for the boys to bowl, and not only did the bowling alley honor the passes but also didn’t have me pay for their shoes. So basically the ONLY money I paid at the alley specifically for the boys was the $10 for the fries. Then at the ice cream shop the bill for the boys came to about $15. So amazing considering I was very afraid at how expensive the day was going to be. I’ll be thrilled to tell the group the whole day was only $25 to entertain the boys and that each couple need only donate $3-4 towards the group fund!!

So then we picked up the kids (two of the women from lifegroup took care of our kids while we were bowling) and now we’re home. The kids are watching VeggieTales while I catch up on emails. Denis is about to wash our cars (our drought restrictions were lifted a bit here in Fort Mill and we’re now allowed to wash cars on Saturdays now and water our lawn one day a week).

Last bit of news – I got my new fancy pedometer just before we left for bowling. Since then I’ve done 2050 steps. My eventual goal is to do 10,000 steps a day (I’m POSITIVE I’ll do that in Disney with no problem). It’s a very daunting goal right now though – I’ll be lucky to reach 5,000 for a while, I think. Oh, and I’m down another pound. As of today I’ve lost seven pounds since my last doctor appointment, which is one pound more than last month, so I’m very happy about that.

So yeah, it was a fun day. A tiring day, but a fun day.