Happy Valentine's Day!

Ahhh....Valentine's Day. The day we celebrate with the one we love.

Tradtionally the day to give your favorite person flowers, candy, or jewelery.

I was lucky and my husband wanted to spoil me by giving me my Valentine's Day gift a little early.

Just had to snap a picture of it and share it with you:



Yes you saw it right. It's a top of the line, brand new Bissell Carpet Shampoo Machine.

I was in the final stages of getting his new office ready and my old carpet shampoo machine wouldn't work so we made a trip to Sears and bought us a new one. He jokingly said that it was my Valentine's Present.

Bless him.....and he's probably right that this IS my Valentine's Day present. Seriously though, doesn't bother me a bit -- I got my best Valentine's Day present for eternity when I married him!

Drama, Drama and more Drama

I'm telling you every day we have to deal with some drama or another.

It's not enough we have our own PERSONAL drama to live with, but the drama that involves our employees.

Murphy (the Murphy in Murphy's Law) is really trying to take his crack at preventing us from going away next weekend.

I'm not going to get into the exact details of our latest drama but will tell you it involved:

Testosterone
Punching
Curse Words
Yelling
Police

Go ahead and think of any scenario that you like using the above list and you can probably figure out what happened.

We would appreciate it if EVERYONE COULD just get along and PLEASE allow us the 3 or 4 days that we desperately need to get away and find our inner peace again.

If not......then the drama next week will probably include us!

My Daily Word

Life is not perfect
Every day in my life is not perfect
I am not perfect either
I have good moods, bad moods, stress, joy and happiness like all the rest of the people on this earth
Most of the time I post happy stuff.....because I don't think people like to hear about your angry stuff. But let's be real here.....we all are not happy all the time.

When Paul's mom was alive she used to get a little envelope every other month from some church organization. Since she had had her stroke and was unable to read, I just threw it away (I wish I hadn't done that now).

Shortly after she passed, we received another one of those envelopes. I decided to open it up and see what it was and notify them that she was deceased and to stop sending them.

It was a little booklet.....The Daily Word. And inside it contained an inspirational message for every day of the month. An uplifting message to help when those days are bad and to inspire you and let you know that you are not alone, that God is within you and all around us.



I took this as a sign and I have been reading the message every day since (well almost every day). It's amazing that on some days that the message fits your life at exactly that moment.

Some days when I really just feel like the weight of every trouble is on my shoulders I can read this message and smile, knowing that I am not alone.



Thank you Daily Word. I am listening.

Afternnon Off + Great Times + Great Friends

Amazing what taking an afternoon does to your positive mental attitude. We literally have not had a day off since Christmas (and that's only because we were closed that day). We are not afforded the luxury of a sick day off.....if there is stuff that needs to be done -- it gets done. But yesterday we just reached a point where we blew things off and just enjoyed our afternoon and evening.

Since our "day off" didn't begin until 2pm our first stop was a nice quiet lunch. Spaghetti with meat sauce and Italian Sausage sandwich was on the menu and we leisurely played with our Blackberries while we waited for our food. We've had these crazy phones for over a year, but we are still learning how to use them!

We then made the trek across town to IKEA to lose ourselves amongst that huge warehouse for an hour. We were on a mission to find something to put our stereo on and a matching piece for the TV, but we didn't really find anything. I think that our minds weren't into trying to figure it out......so we just walked around and looked at all the great stuff they have.

By this time it was almost 5pm so we came home for a quick nap, because you know what Tuesday night is........TRVIA!

For those of you who don't know this, my husband and I are major trivia nerds. We used to play on the little trivia boxes found at local bars and restaurants, but a year ago we discovered Live Team Trivia and now we are so hooked. We have been playing live trivia for almost a year now and have met a group of friends with whom we play regularly against. It is so much fun to play competitively and really try to use your brain. It's also fun to reign as the supreme winners at the end of the night. But we have to honestly say the best part is the amazing friends that we have made on the way. We have so much fun every trivia night and do just about everything we can to make sure we can attend. I am also happy to report that are awesome team THE VILLAGE IDIOTS were the grand prize winners last night!




But all good days must come to an end......but I definitely am starting out my day with a better attitude and a goal to get everything accomplished that needs to get done!

Ode to Onions

This blog post is not meant to make you cry! Okay.....I'm not really claiming that my mind is always thinking normal thoughts, but seriously sometimes you just need to break away from the ordinary and write about some of the wacky things that float through your brain.

This time I'm dedicating this post to onions. I SO LOVE onions. Doesn't matter what kind -- I tend to put them in everything. So when I started thinking about them, I realized that there were so many varieties and that I have probably tried most of them.

So let's have some fun today and test your onion IQ! (answers are below)













There were so many more that we could have tested ourselves on......but I really need to get something more productive done!


Answers: Yellow Onion, Green Onions, Purple Onion, Pearl Onions, Leeks, Onion Rings

You snooze......you lose

Well we procastinated just a little long and missed out on the cheap tickets to Columbus for the pizza show (maybe it was subconsciously intentional).

However, all is not lost. We've decided that we DEFINITELY need a couple of days off and really freezing cold Columbus Ohio in February might not exactly be the best place to go.

So here's our options: we are going to wait until the Monday before (Feb. 14) when Continental posts their last minute fares. If Columbus show up on that list -- we're going to go. If it doesn't, we're going to play travel roulette......which is our favorite game to play anyways. That particular weekend is the perfect time to get away for 3-4 days because there is no school pizza nights, there's no payroll, and our store manager's baby isn't due for another 2 weeks (hope he doesn't come early).

For those of you who are new to my little blog......I'll describe travel roulette. We don't have the luxury of planning our trips in advance in most cases. Whenever we try to plan one something always happens at one of our stores to thwart are plans. Usuall someone quits, someone doesn't show up, we fire someone, or some major piece of equipment decides to break down.

So what we usually do is a couple of weeks in advance we look at our schedule and says "okay we can be gone here" and then we check our favorite "last minute" travel places and pick the best deal......so it's always a last minute surprise to us where we are traveling. It's really fun and adds an extra element of surprise because you decide on Monday or Tuesday you're leaving and on "poof" on Saturday you're off to a destination you had no idea you were going to.

Some recent examples have been our trip to San Francisco: $250 each (included airfare, car rental, and hotel) for 4 days. Washington DC: $300 each (including all of the above). Los Angeles: $250 for two airline tickets.

So if you love to travel, love the thrill of a last minute adventure, and like to travel cheap......here's a couple of awesome places that we use for our last minute travel.

Travelocity - Last Minute Packages. This is the site we use the most. VERY reasonable packages for a last minute traveler and lets you build your trip.

Continental Airlines: Look on Monday night and they post their last minute cheap flights that leave on Saturday. Usually there's a choice of international destinations for as little as $218 a ticket and U.S. Cities. If you have their airline miles saved up, most of these tickets can be bought for as little as $36 (we bought one of our tickets to L.A. for $36).

Also U.S. Airways and Delta have last minute fare deals (but we don't find them to be as reasonable as the ones mentioned above)

Well, that's enough of my traveling wisdom for now. Keep watching....I'm sure you'll get to see what exciting destination we have picked out. Hopefully there's a nice warm tropical location that we'll get to choose from.

I really think I should have been a travel agent when I grew up!

December Birthdays

In my immediate family you either have a birthday in August or it's in December.

Makes it easy. My boys are both August and Paul and I are both December.

My birthday is Christmas Eve. Not much open that day except the stores, but we started a tradition a few years ago and now it's something we look forward to every year - The Birthday Bowling Bash. It's a family bowling day and we have had to limit who can come. Everyone knows how much fun it is so we usually have a crowd that wants to come, but I really want to keep it small and just family. This year my "adopted" son Rubio joined us again. He attended the first Birthday Bowling Bash, so we decided it was only fitting to have him attend another.

Here's some of the pics from this year:









December was a busy party month for us this year. Paul turned the big 5-0, so I had a surprise party for him with old friends, new friends, old employees, and current employees. He had no clue and was genuinely surprised. The event was a huge success and the highlight of the evening was the karaoke.

Here's some pictures of the festivities:









How special it is to have a birthday in December and share it with friends and family!