But I blame it all on Mom & Tami!

It could be considered necessities… if stretched far enough!

Mom H & Tami invited me to a crop on Friday, so that we could all get caught up on some of the pics that are languishing around our houses unable to be truly seen and enjoyed.  This is a good thing!

While preparing for this, I happened upon a large box filled with old pics… pics of Eric & I loooooooong before the little people showed up.  So, I decided to do an album of the 2 of us… I gathered together the photos and some supplies & headed down.  I had already been told that I would be getting the album as an early birthday gift (yay!)

I bought paper.  And stickers.  I know, they were all new things, but they were for something that I had been putting off for such a long time!  Yes, I can justify it until I’m blue in the face… the fact is that a grand total of 8 days into this compact, I fell off of the wagon.  BUT we were able to get my album almost finished and the girls got a good start on their scrapbooks over the weekend.  We spent Saturday sitting around the table down there having a little crop of our own.  The girls each got a few pages of our Disneyland trip put together, and it was such a nice time of fellowship!  Memories were made, and that is what is important.

AND…  I managed to survive Target WITHOUT breaking down and buying anything that was not on either the school supply list or the household needs list!  This is a HUGE thing for me… Target seems to be my downfall.  I haven’t figured out just why, but I seem to spend $100 per trip there.  Did I mention that the girls were with me?  We successfully navigated back to school supply shopping – complete with the “Mommy, can I get this?” – and didn’t walk out with a bunch of unnecessary junk that will just end up in the trash in a month.  No splurges, no extras, no impulse buys.  We had a list, and if it wasn’t on the list, it didn’t go in the cart.  No, I wasn’t too popular, but we did it!

Can that success be measured against my failure later that night?

Well, I successfully survived day 1 of officially being on the compact… of course the fact that it’s between paydays & I have a grand total of $21 to my name probably helped with that!

Not going anywhere that has a retail outlet probably helped too… that could be a good answer to the issue of buying new things!  Resist the temptation to purchase by avoiding the outlets.

By Jove!  It could work!

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Oh, and in case you were wondering, we did have salad for dinner… fresh, organic lettuce from Garden Treasures, crasins, black currants, homemade croûtons, fresh mozzarella and crumbled goat cheese.  Yum!

In my defense, the goat cheese came from Costco in a package 3x the size as the grocer, for $2 less!  And I bought it a few weeks ago.

And yes, the girls are devouring the rest of the butterfly biscuits for dessert… At least E for to try a bite before they were gone!

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In other news, Mr. Wonderful himself is attempting to install an iPod player into the Suby… a VERY cool gadget we picked up for the trip to the big D… alas it did not arrive until after we left.  c’est la vie.

The down side here is that the cd player does’t seem to want to work… because the former owner apparently JAMMED a couple of cd’s inside the changer!  He is working furtively to remove the offending disks (and yes, they really are… paul mccartney anyone?) without destroying the stereo.  Please send prayers and good cd removing thoughts our way!  Apparently one of them is bent inside & therefore wedged… ugh.

So, assuming he gets THAT fixed, we will be spending the weekend filling up the super large trash bin so that we can get rid of it & get back to the tiny one we are used to (hear that girls?  Your rooms are going in the bin!), and hopefully getting the base level of the retaining wall put down so that the rest of the blocks can go on in rapid fashion next weekend… or sometime after that.

No rest for the weary, eh?

Anywho, I’m off to do the dishes… again.  how can 2 girls make such a pile in the sink so many times each day?  It is beyond my comprehension.  Any tips?