The World Is In Trouble.

The World of Warcraft, anyway. We got the game installed on my laptop, I tested it out with my character on Jake's account, and it runs great. Soooo....I now have my very own account. Jake did the refer a friend thing they've got going on so that he could get an exclusive mount, and we've spent the past two night (his nights off) leveling some new characters. We get triple experience when we are grouped together, so we're already at level 20.

Anywho. Not that anyone cares about that!

Simlish

So...I installed The Sims 2 on my laptop. I'm surprised at how well it runs, being, well, a laptop and all. However...I'm NOT pleased about the fact that some of my downloads don't seem to like my laptop. They must have issues with Vista, because they work just fine on the desktop, which still has XP. *sigh* I love my downloads, but I guess if I'm going to Sim it up on the laptop, I'll have to do without. Sucks, because I have a really cool hack that gets your Sims through college MUCH faster...I hate how long college takes normally. Even some of my objects aren't working correctly. It's weird, I can't figure out why some things are working and some aren't. Oh well, such is life I suppose.

But now I'm going to go play WoW. A new patch came out yesterday and I want to play around with some of the new stuff.

Triples and stuff

So, as my fellow Charlotteans probably know, Lowes Foods held triples this week for the first time in a year. I was going to skip it, because there's not a Lowes within my usual five mile radius, but I caved. I had some great coupons that would expire before the next expected Harris Teeter triples, and I just couldn't waste those extra savings!

I made two trips. Altogether, I got:

*5 boxes of Hamburger Helper
*1 box of Brillo pads
*8 packets of Betty Crocker cookie mix
*2 Sargento Salad Finishers - these are delish if you haven't tried them yet!
*7 packages of Dole fruit cups
*2 packages of turkey
*4 ready to drink Nesquiks
*1 box of Kleenex
*2 Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bars
*2 boxes of Betty Crocker Ultimate brownie mix
*2 boxes of Fiber One bars

I spent $27.07 and saved $52.62. I probably could have done better, but I totally just winged it since, as I said, I hadn't planned on doing triples at all. I AM skipping Bloom triples, because there's REALLY not one close enough to me to make it worth it, and HT triples are right around the corner, so I need to prepare for that!

I've also been a coupon trading machine this past week. I sent out envelopes to a few CM's (Charlotte Mommies, if you don't know) and worked out four different trades on Hot Coupon World. Really, my week has just been consumed with coupons. I've been working hard to get all of my coupons entered into the new database over at HCW, but it's taking twice as long as it should because Noah was a naughty little two year old and messed up my nice neat stacks.

Aaaaannnd....I was busy writing up a guest post for Dana over at Frugal In Virginia. I'm super excited to have had the opportunity - thanks again, Dana! Everyone else, be sure to go check out my post on Sunday.

I also spent part of today gathering the rest of the materials I need to make my bag! I got my fabric in on Wednesday, but didn't really have time to venture out to the fabric store on Thursday. The only problem I ran into is the pattern calls for using ribbon on the front flap of the bag (it's a messenger style bag), and I couldn't find any ribbon that really coordinated with my fabric. Guess I'm going to have to go on an Internet hunt for some ribbon - sure, I could just skip the ribbon, but I don't want to! I had been hoping to possibly start sewing tonight, but Jake so kindly informed me this afternoon that he was scheduled for an off duty gig tonight. Maddy's still mainly sleeping through the night, but I'd rather not be interrupted on the off chance that she wakes up (which is a possibility, as my poor baby girl is constipated and hardly slept at all last night because she was so miserable)...thus, I'd prefer to have Jake around to perform Daddy Duty. Oh well, my bag can wait until his next nights off. That'll give me time to find some dang ribbon!

Well, I'm pretty much out of things to say for tonight. Buuuuttt...I'd like to do something here that I do every now and then over on Open Diary, and that is to ask you all to request some pictures from me! Give me a reason to use my camera. ;) You can request anything you'd like, but keep it clean! If you can't think of a picture request, feel free to ask me some questions instead. I love to do Q&A's!

Ridiculously Giddy

It's ridiculous how excited I am over something so small.

I ordered some fabric on Saturday to make a bag for myself. When I was pregnant with Maddy, I finally found a pattern for a diaper bag I liked. Only problem was, I couldn't find any fabric that caught my eye. Well, I finally found some and now I'm like a kid at Christmas time, waiting for it to arrive. I haven't sewn anything in months...my poor neglected sewing machine. Anyway, I'm waiting for that fabric to arrive, and then I'm going to make a trip to Hancock fabrics to get some coordinating fabric for the liner and all that.

And Maddy is still sleeping at night! Granted, she wants to wake up at 5 AM or so to eat, which is fine, buuuut...she'll go back to sleep for like, half an hour and then she's wide awake. Boo to that, because I am NOT a morning person and that means I'm very ready for a nap by noon. unfortunately, the kids seem to have other ideas. Noah's been resisting his nap lately, and it's not always easy getting Maddy down, either. Maddy will eventually go to sleep, and so will Noah, but I'm tired of it being such a battle with Noah lately. I know he's not ready to drop naps altogether; once he goes to sleep he still sleeps for a good two hours or more.

Anyway, the princess is demanding my attention, so I've got to cut this short.

Grateful

Maddy made a big turn around Friday night. Out of nowhere, she decided 8pm would be bedtime. She didn't wake up until 4:45 Saturday morning.

Last night, she was once again out by eight. She didn't wake up this morning until six.

Tonight, it was 7:30. She did wake up a little bit around 9:30 when she wriggled her arms out of her swaddle blanket, but other than that, not a peep. Wonder what time she'll wake up tomorrow morning?

Of course, now that I've written about this, I've probably jinxed myself. But hey, at least I got a couple of nights of good sleep.

Sleep? Really?

Well, I had every intention of writing another post last night, buuuut....I slept instead! That's right, for once, my kids were not conspiring against me. Both kids were asleep by eight. And I was tired, so I went to bed, too.

Didn't hear a peep out of Noah. Didn't hear a peep out of Maddy until 4:45. That's almost nine hours! I woke up a few times on my own, probably because I'm so used to being awakened by one or the other, but other than that, I got wonderful, glorious, uninterrupted sleep.

Today just might be a very good day indeed.

Busy, busy

Yay me, I've actually been productive this morning! Normally, I save most of my cleaning tasks until after Noah goes to bed - it's just easier to do things without him tagging behind me. But this morning I've already:

• Swept the dining room
• Pledged both desks
• Ran a dishwasher load and put those away
• Am running another dishwasher load (and no, I don't let my kitchen get that terrible, but that first load I did was actually the second washing for those dishes - our dishwasher is the suck sometimes)
• Washed and dried a load of towels
• Cleaned and vacuumed Noah's room
• Cleaned kitchen counters
• Put a bunch of stuff out in the recycling bin
• Shredded a stack of papers about 2 inches thick - let's just say I emptied my shredder twice

Oh, and of course all of the normal mommy stuff, like feeding and changing diapers and the like. In fact, I'm typing this one handed because I'm feeding Maddy at the moment.

After Jake gets up, I've got to make a quick run to the grocery store. He's doing an off duty gig tonight, so I'll get more accomplished and will maybe even get to play WoW for a bit. Don't be surprised if I decide to write another post here later, either!