A Rambly Saturday

It's a happy Saturday around here!

We're cleaning and packing and getting ready to leave for Arkansas. It's crazy expensive for a family of five to fly at Thanksgiving so we're driving--and I dread the long car ride--but once we're on the road I can sit back and relax while John does the driving. Thanks, honey!

I downloaded a bunch of new stuff from iTunes to keep me occupied and our library has these cool Playaway audio books you can check out so we've each got a couple of those to take with us as well. Here's a pic of one of my playaways. You just plug your own earbuds into it and listen away. (I love this book and I've seen the movie no less than 10 times. It's one of my faves!!!)

I like leaving my house clean when we go on a trip, but I have even more incentive to leave it clean since we have someone house-sitting/pet-sitting for us. I'm pretty anal about a clean house but have had to let my standards go a bit lot since my vacuum cleaner broke last week. The motor quit and I'm sure I could have it repaired, but I don't want to. It was a cheapie vacuum to begin with. I really wanted a Dyson but we didn't have the money (we're cash people) to spend at the time so I bought a Kenmore and I've hated it ever since. I'm definitely going to buy a Dyson this time, but I'm waiting until the Black Friday sales. In the last week, I've had overnight company, a neighborhood coffee at my house, and now another houseguest on his way and my floors are being cleaned with the equivalent of a dustbuster. Shudder.

Last night, the girls and I went to see our neighbor friend's drama program. Her group performed selections from Camp Rock and it was awesome! The other groups performed selections from The Sound of Music, Oklahoma, and The Jungle Book. I LOVE MUSICALS! My parents had almost every musical soundtrack you can imagine (vinyl records) and I grew up listening to them all the time. I think I knew all the words to all the songs they sang last night--Sarah and Abbey were quite surprised when I was belting out the Oklahoma tunes on the drive home. Our kids are pretty familiar with The Sound of Music but I think over Christmas break I'm going to introduce them to some of my other favorites...Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, and Camelot!

I had much more stuff rambling around in my head when I sat down to blog but evidently it wasn't important enough to remember because it's gone now!  I should probably get up and switch out the last load of laundry so I can finish packing. My goal is to get it all finished by the time the Razorback game starts. Go Hogs! I'm really hoping they finish the season 10-2, and I think it's entirely possible! We're taking my laptop with us this week so maybe I'll pop in and blog. If not, I hope you all have a very happy Thanksgiving. If you're like me, you have so very much to be grateful for.