7 Quick Takes Friday - In Case You Were Wondering??

1-
First of all, I went on retreat last weekend. The retreat billed itself as a "healing retreat", and I dragged my SIL along with me. I was the first person there in the morning (SIL missed the turn for the Knights of Columbus hall), and so I sat down at one of the tables, opened my folder, saw this, and contemplated running away...

In the end, I did stay, and I am much more comfortable with the concept and the practice of the "woo woo gifts" (as my table leader liked to call them...) Hubby, on the other hand is still VERY suspicious...particularly of speaking in tongues and being slain in the spirit...so I'm thinking that when our church has a charismatic retreat this summer that I might make him go!

2-
I changed our theme on gmail yesterday (to ninjas...just for hubby who thinks he ought to have been a ninja or a pirate...one of his coworkers told him that he snorts too much to be a ninja...and that's definitely true..) and it asked me to put in our city...so I did...and Gmail told me that I did not input a valid city name. In the end, this time I put in Denver (I don't know why Gmail needs to know where I am located for a ninja themed e-mail browser...) The last time this happened, I was entering a sweepstakes (a very dorky hobby of mine...wait...I don't have any non-dorky hobbies!) I think maybe it was for an RV...when I put in our city name, it told me that it did not have enough letters (as though I have control over how many letters are in our town's name...) that time, I got creative and used the name of another town that shares our zip code (and has about 100 people in it...)

3-
Last week for story time at the library, they met at the local museum and talked about buffalo bones and the Indians that used to live around here. So, Eva has been telling us all about the museum ever since. Hubby had Wednesday off, and really wanted to take the girls on a field trip (he wanted to do the Denver Zoo or Museum of Nature and Science...but as it was BEFORE PAYDAY, we ended up doing the closer and way more affordable local museum...) It's a good thing we didn't go much farther, because I don't think we even spent 45 minutes there...Naturally Charlotte pooped her diaper on the walk up and smelled terrible the whole time (that child WILL be potty training soon...) and we took the tour at Eva speed. It is a pretty neat museum...much better organized than the one in hubby's hometown.

4-
Continuing with my goal to make more things from scratch (such as the hot dog buns and tortillas I posted about already), and continuing with my new tradition of cooking steaks the dinner before payday (we're working our way through half a quarter beef...) we had a really tasty dinner last night of rib eye steaks, Au gratin potatoes and glazed carrots (The only veggies currently in the house are some carrot and celery sticks, a bag of frozen soup veggies, and the last bag of corn we put up this summer...) I really need more practice on timing from scratch items. Hubby grilled out the steaks, and also grilled a bunch of chicken legs while he was at it, so I have a meal for today half done already!

5-
You don't want to know how many times a day the girls want to watch the "Pug Summer" video that hubby posted here last week...not to mention the "Bad Pugs" video that if you want to see, you'll have to go over to YouTube (think really bad singing with words changed to relate to a pug using the theme song from COPS)

6-
Today is FILs 50th birthday. Most likely he is being harassed at meals on their cruise. I am wondering how the whole cruise boat thing is going. MIL called me right before they left (they were on the lido deck, with frosty beverages in hand) because they told her that cell phones wouldn't work once they set sail (MIL without her phone for a week is an entertaining thought! She's worse about her cell phone than hubby is about his...and he updates facebook mobily quite a bit now...) The cruise ends tomorrow, then they fly home on Sunday.

7-
I hope that they are having a good time, but I am REALLY looking forward to them getting back...you see, we get their dog when they go on vacation (I guess it's only fair, since they get our dog every time we go out of town...) She's a pug (Bubba's older sister) and her face is even more squished that Bubba's face. Well, she is used to being fed wet dog food that makes her smell (she's getting mostly dry here), sleeping in bed with MIL and FIL (she gets a pillow on the floor here) and getting lots of table scraps (it's a dog eat dog world around here...plus the kids don't drop too much, so she's really screwed...) She is a very sweet dog...but THE SNORING!!! I don't know if I can take it much longer...I'm already suffering from sleep deprivation, and I still have two nights to go!

Of course, there are plenty more quick takes over at Jen's blog!

BONUS EDIT...

So, I just finished up school with Eva, and part way through I noticed that Charlotte was playing with the library books...in particular a book on tape. I told her no, and to put the book back...she left it alone for a while. I looked up later, and noticed she had the book out of the bag, and told her to put it back...she couldn't so she brought it to me, and it was then that I discovered to my horror that she had pulled all of the tape out of the cassette...and actually severed it...so now hubby is going to stop by the library on the way home to find out how we can deal with this (if I can just order a new one for the library, it will be about $8...I remember library replacement fees for books to be $25 when I was a kid...I shudder to think what the standard replacement fee might be now...) Not a particularly good start to the day...