life with the lieutenant: I am basically recording the events of these crazy days so I can read about it in the future. Feel free to skip this post if daily life bores you.

This week has been BUSY so far. Much busier than I anticipated. While I knew that there were a few things going on before leaving for Thanksgiving, it still has not registered in my wee brain that all of these little things now take for-freakin-ever now that there is a small person whose nap schedule MUST be maintained and who is not particularly happy about going for car rides unless I stock him up with a nice sippy cup full of milk.

So yesterday was my POC training in the morning down the road, and I dropped Sam off with my good friend for a "playdate." After the training, I picked Sam up and headed home for his nap. Steve anticipated on coming home for lunch (I have LEFTOVERS! Yippee!), but then got called to a meeting at the last minute, so he needed me to bring him something (LEFTOVERS, just not heated!). So I had to wait for Sam to wake up, then we rushed in the lunch traffic to take Steve his lunch, dropped that off with him, and headed back to the house to feed Sam lunch. Luckily, Sam was in a very cooperative mood with the eating yesterday (the past few days have been a battle of the wills to say the least) and we finished that up fairly quickly. (Well, thinking back, it wasn't quick at all, but it was quick for US.)

Wiped Sammy down, loaded him back up, rounded up the dogs, harnesses, leashes, and headed off to the vet. Y'all, this vet (OFF POST) was such a different and glorious experience compared to the last vet experience. People there were willing to HELP me, and I also wised up and only brought one dog in at a time, which proved to be totally unnecessary, as the vet clinic people were more than willing to take a dog from me, seeing that I had to fill out paperwork and try to entertain the small person. They were quick and nice and helpful and we were in and out in no time. I don't care if they charge double what they would on post, those people are worth their weight in GOLD.

After leaving the vet, we stopped off at the house to drop off the dogs, because holy heavens those dogs were stinky. Sam and I headed back out to the stables on post to drop off all of the dogs' new paperwork so that they can be boarded over Thanksgiving. (Nothing like waiting til the last minute, huh???) After filling out MORE paperwork there and trying to remember what size scoop we use to feed the dogs their food, we were off again. Back to the house and down for a nap. The afternoon nap has been giving us trouble lately (as in, the small person flat out REFUSES to go down for one at all, and instead, will scream his lungs out for an hour straight, only to come out of his crib in a major funk and fuss and fight for the rest of the day). But thankfully, he went down without a fight and slept almost two hours.

During that time, I cooked the scariest-looking ham EVER (like, I didn't even want to touch it with my hands, and I'm not the type that is leery of raw meat), I learned that I would need to make mashed potatoes for 90+ people the next day (today), and that I would have to figure out how to do that, as well as drop Steve's truck off at the Chevrolet dealer in Hoptown so it can be repaired while we're out of town. Luckily (I guess), my friend needs me to cook a brisket for her today since she has an FRG meeting as well, and that will give me time to make all those mashed potatoes. (The mashed potatoes are for OUR company's FRG Thanksgiving potluck/meeting.) My friend will come pick up her brisket as we're fixing to leave for our meeting, and then she will come back to our house after the meetings are over and sit here while Sam sleeps so that Steve and I can drive up to Hoptown and drop off his truck.

THEN I will try not to stress out about all of the things that I have not packed for our Thanksgiving trip tomorrow. I will try to make a master list today of all the things we need to take down with us, pack it in the morning, drop off the dogs at the stables, remember to take a tub of their food with them, come home and pack up the car so that when Steve gets through with his meeting, we can roll out of this crazy town and head to my parents' house!! Sounds simple enough, right?
Well I'm off to go battle the crazies who are doing their Thanksgiving shopping at the commissary this morning so that I can buy 15lbs of potatoes and 8 buckets of sour cream. Hopefully this tornadic weather will settle down for a minute so that my hair doesn't frizz to oblivion while I'm running in and out of there.

Gratuitous picture (because if you got this far in this post, you deserve it):