coins, boots, shopping, V-Day song

That is the sum total of all the change in my wallet. I never use cash. Just debit or credit cards. I guess that's why I get so excited when I have coins. I love to scan them immediately after receiving them to see what dates are on them. Today I lucked out an got a 1965. The others were 1986 and 199-something. The older, the better in my book. I don't DO anything with the coins, other than spend them later. I just find it most interesting to see how old the coins are and imagine what exciting paths they have traveled before they reached my grubby little fingers. Today it dawned on me that soon enough 1986 will be an "old" coin, eventhough it doesn't seem old to me. I remember 1986 pretty clearly, so that coin can't be OLD yet...right?

Today we did a TON of shopping. Robert bought a VERY nice grey wool pea coat. Stylish, and on SALE! It was originally $300 and we bought it for $90. No such deals in the women's department at Dillards. We returned the rain boots that Robert originally bought me for my birthday. Before you think, "Why would Robert buy Nicole rain boots for her birthday?", consider where I work. My school is a series of 21 portable buildings. We have ZERO interior hallways. That means if it's a rainy day, anytime I need to go to the office or another classroom or the lunch building (it is NOT a cafeteria, we eat in our classrooms), I get soaking wet. There are small rivers that rush between buildings, following the slope of the land along our campus. In sum, YES, Nicole really did want rain boots for her birthday. The boots he picked were really cute, but did not fit over my massive calf muscles, which I was blessed with thanks to genetics. I did a lot of research (talking to my co-workers who also have rain boots), and decided to check out Dillard's stock. I got some super-cute black and white polka-dot ones. Addison also NEEDED some rain boots, so we found her some Hello Kitty ones, which also had polka-dots.
We also shopped at Pier 1, ate lunch at our favorite Chick-fil-A, and rounded out the morning at Marshall's. We stocked up on some new dress up clothes for Addy's class at school, she picked out a Tinkerbell outfit, a cute summer skirt set, and I bought two new tables for our living room. It was a great shopping morning. Addison got really mad at me in Dillards when Robert was shopping for coats, but she later said she was mad with me because she was hungry. Go figure.

Looking forward to our family dinner tonight for all the February birthdays! Yummy spaghetti, bread, salad, and birthday cake!

Here is Addison's Valentine's installment of rhyme and melody for you:

ducks at the park

This morning was a shopping morning. Addy & I went shopping together while Robert did secret birthday shopping for me. She picked out a new dress (which I'm not sure will ever go on her body again) and some cute pink jelly shoes. She had to put the shoes on the minute we got in the car. She wore them all morning, and only has them off now because she peed all over them and they're currently drying after a bath. She said to Robert, "I don't like my black shoes too much. I just like my pink shoes, Daddy." Such a fashionista.

After we met back up with Robert we had lunch at Addy's favorite Chick-fil-A (ok, it's just about my favorite, too!) and then we trekked over to Lake Ella. Addison walked around the whole lake, stopping to look at every dog, duck, squirrel, or sea gull that passed our way. We wandered for about an hour, ran into Kenley who was bike hunting with a friend, then headed to Barb's Brittles & Ice Cream for a snack. We also went to Quarter Moon where I bought at bluish-green dress for our cruise in March.

so many things to share!

Life has been crazy lately! Every time I think we're going to have a slow down, more things pop up! This weekend was packed full of activity. On Saturday we got up & went to play disc golf with Andrew & Evelyn. I played my first ever hole. I was not awesome at it, so Addison & I went to the playground to swing. When it was time to go, Adds cried ALL THE WAY to the car and continued until we got to Chick-Fil-A (probably 20 minutes total). I've never been so happy for her to eat french fries! Later that evening we went to the Winter Festival where we saw tons of people we knew. ("Tallahassee is SUCH a small town" - just for you mom!) We, of course, went by BJ's Party House booth for face painting. Lauren painted Addy's face to look like a pink kitty and then we visited with Miss Julie. We ate some good food, and watched a little bit of the parade. Evelyn put it best when she said we only got to see the "top half of the parade". We were so far back it was hard to see much of anything. But we were very close to the announcer, Frank Ranicky, so we got to make fun of his pronunciations of words all evening. Addy got whiny & tired, so we left before the rest of the family did. :-(

Sunday was Market Days, which is always exciting. I bought several Christmas presents and saw lots of things that I loved. I bought a new beach print for our living room. It's by a photographer from Gainesville and it's a print of St. Joe's. I bought it for two reasons: 1) it's St. Joe's & (in case you didn't know) that's where Robert & I got married, and 2) the blue color of the water is absolutely mesmerizing & blends beautifully with the blues in our pillows. I later saw a piece of art that said "Art doesn't have to match your furniture". Made me think a bit, but I decided that in my house, art does have to match the furniture. Addison took a solid nap in her stroller 'cause we were there for FOUR hours shopping. My dad stuck with us the whole time...which I am very impressed with!

Monday afternoon I was supposed to go to an educational sorority (ADK) meeting with a co-worker, but I flaked out. Just really wanted to go home. Maybe another time.

Tuesday was awesome. Trevor & Jen came over with pizza. Patrick came & so did Baby Ryan, who is definitely not a baby anymore. I'm going to make a concerted effort to stop calling him "Baby" Ryan. It's just going to be a process. Anyway, Ryan joined us for his first ever game night - AND it was his first time playing Cranium. It was really fun, but quick. Trevor, Patrick & I really lucked out with the questions so we won right away. Robert, Jen & Ryan were close behind, though. We had belated birthday cupcakes for Ryan (12/4) and Patrick (12/5) and Addison sang "happy birfee" to them. It was way cute! When we were eating cupcakes & brownies, Addison sat on the new lap desk that we bought her at Market Days and it snapped. It's got one really jagged, sharp side now. Awesome. Don't know how we're going to fix it, but I'm sure Robert will come up with something.

I think this weekend will be free. At least I hope it will. I still have a LOT of shopping to do for Robert (READ: ALL of my shopping for Robert!). Also, we need to do more for our secret Santa stocking people for my family's Christmas morning. I also need to spend some time cleaning my house...ugh.

AMALY returns on Friday! WHOO HOO! And I'm 8 work days away from my Christmas break! And only (almost) 11 days until Addison turns 2 and Fenella gets married! Holy cow! Lots of fun coming our way!