Ah...

Thanksgiving was wonderful. Having my mom and step-dad here was so great. We spent a lot of time together, and they were so glad to meet Aurora. We had a great time - we went to Canterbury Village in Lake Orion, Michigan and spent the morning there. See, my mother collects moose stuff. My step-dad is a Jr, and his nickname is Moose. My mom has an intimidating collection of stuffed "meese" (as I call them) and loves little moose ornaments. We went absolutely nuts in there, looking for as many moose things as we can find.

We found the best ornament ever:



We found others for her, but we didn't get pictures of all of them.

There's a Santa Claus you can get pictures with, so we're going to have to come back to get the required "kid crying on Santa's lap" picture. After we went to Canterbury Village, we (my mother, my mother-in-law, myself, Aurora) went to Great Lakes Crossing, a huge mall in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It's full of outlet stores (just like Arizona Mills Mall, or any other "Mills" mall if you have one near you), so of course us women went crazy. We visited four different stores looking for a Christmas dress for my daughter, and we found the perfect one at Gymboree. I'd been eyeing dresses at The Children's Place, but we never even got that far around - we found the perfect one! It's a red plaid, and we found a cream shirt to go under it, and little socks with trim that matches the shirt. At Osh Kosh, we found a little sweater - red with a cream faux fur trim. All I have to do now is get cream tights (which I can get anywhere) and maaaaybe a little bow for her hair, and she'll be perfect for pictures. Don't tease me, this is my first baby, and she's my little girl, and I want everything to be perfect for her first Christmas.

I feel good, I walked up to the grocery store and bought bananas and coffee (because I needed coffee. Needed.) and... cookies. I have a confession: I am addicted to all things pumpkin. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin squares, toasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin EVERYTHING. And Kroger had a little box of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. On Sale. I couldn't help myself. I came home and admitted to my husband that I'd made a splurge purchase. He asked what it was, I pulled out the cookies, and he laughed and said it was all right. He likes pumpkin too, just not nearly as much as I do.

This has been a productive morning for me. I cleaned up the kitchen a little while my daughter sleeps, and I loaded and ran the dishwasher. All I have to do now is fold the laundry in the dryer and maybe start a load of laundry again and I'll have accomplished just about everything I wanted to this morning. Instead I decided to work on the blog, since I haven't touched it in over a week. Still, this was also on my to-do list, so it wasn't a complete waste.