Long week.

I don't even know where to start. It's been a week since my last post, but it feels more like a year! We left on Wednesday morning for Iowa for a Thanksgiving visit. It was great to see everyone. Uncle Steve and Jenny were there. It had been a while since we had seen them. I guess since Annabeth's first birthday party?

When we left the house, both kids were starting to battle a cold. After only a few hours on the road, we realized we had made a big mistake. We had left the crib tent here. That meant none of us would sleep and we knew it! Nick didn't want to turn the car around, although that was my suggestion. I called several Babies R Us stores along the way trying to find another one, but no one had any. It's an online only item and hard to find. Dang!

The first night was just as we expected. No sleep. Nights two and three? No sleep. It was miserable. And after the first night, Nick and I both woke up with cold symptoms. We tried to kick it, but just couldn't. We're all still sick, but it seems to have hit me the worst. Greeeeat.

We did manage to get out on Black Friday. We went to the only store in Nick's home town-Wal Mart. We really didn't need anything at all, but I love a good challenge and Nick and I convinced Uncle Steve to venture out with us. We all picked up a couple of Christmas gifts and I grabbed a new camera for myself. I wanted a small, compact camera to take with us to Disney World this month and I found one I liked for a good price. I also picked up some PJs for the kids and a couple of other small things. We got off really cheap, even with a new camera! Yippee!

On the last night, we all got to bed reasonably early. We didn't get great (not even good sleep) and Annabeth woke up for the day around 3:30am. Ugh! Seriously? Nick then managed to break his toe by kicking a weight bench and carried Annabeth upstairs. I wanted Evan to sleep as long as possible so I went up with them. When Evan woke up around 5:30, we loaded up the car and headed home. That was on Saturday. Good thing, too, because apparently they got a good snowfall on Sunday. We did drive in some wet/slushy conditions almost all the way home, but pulling into the drive before 3 pm felt awesome!

We did get up and went to church yesterday. We went back and forth because we are all still not feeling 100%. I'm at about 40% and that's really bad for me. But Evan needed to practice for the Christmas program that is next Sunday and both he and Annabeth seemed to be feeling better so I took one for the team.

This morning is like all the other Mondays I've loathed. I didn't want to get out of bed and I still feel so awful. I let Nick take Evan to school and then he took me to drop off my van at the local tire place. Apparently, I need new front brakes! Good grief! They started making noise while we were on our trip, but it wasn't until we pulled into our driveway that we realized it was a big deal. I called first thing this morning to see if they could look at it and so I'm carless today and hoping to pick up my car just in time to wait in the darn pick up line. The good Lord was with us on that long drive home with our bad brakes. I hate to spend the money on new ones so close to Disney, but would much rather have them fixed before the trip. *sigh....it never ends.

I'm gonna have some lunch and try to rest a bit before the rest of the day starts.
Oh, but before I do that, I was tagged by Julie in her blog and challenged to locate and post the 4th picture in the 4th album on my computer. So here goes....
Now I have to challenge 4 people to do the same so I challenge Danni, Chelle, Stephanie and Peggy.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from this week:

And a video of Evan opening his Christmas gift from Great Grandpa and Grandma. Can you tell he was excited?