A whole week?

I can hardly believe it's been a whole week since my last blog entry. What have I been doing with myself, anyway? Let's see...
Elise was sick...
Bethany was sick...
Becca was sick...
I was sick...
So yeah, that pretty much sums up my week. It wasn't a horrible sickness, thank goodness! Just fevers, feeling crummy, and a bit of a sore throat. And it only took about a day to get over the fever and feeling crummy part of it, so it wasn't so bad.
What else...
The girls didn't have school this past Tuesday for Veteran's Day so we had plans to get our chores done in the morning, make applesauce in the afternoon, and maybe go shopping and out to dinner in the evening. Well...the applesauce adventure kind of fell apart on us. I started with two batches in the morning using my friend's "Squeezo Strainer." Basically, you cook the apple slices (you don't even have to peel them!) and then put them in the strainer, turn the crank, and out comes applesauce. The peels go out the end. You add sugar & cinnamon and then either can them in a hot water bath or freeze. I freeze. But anyway, I decided to try this route because I was getting tired of my crock-pot option and my hands were sick of peeling apples. After two batches, the strainer needed to be cleaned out. As I was doing that, I dropped a metal washer into the sink. I immediately turned off the water and fished around for it, but couldn't find it. I figured it was gone, but I could probably replace it. I finished cleaning and then proceeded to run the garbage disposal. Bad idea. I heard the washer jumping around in there and quick turned off the garbage disposal. But too late. The disposal was jammed and wouldn't work at all. I thought I had broken it forever. I packed up the Squeezo and pretty much sulked around the rest of the day.
Of course, when my genius husband came home, it took him all of 5 minutes to find the washer, get it out, and reset the garbage disposal, which wasn't actually broken; it had just turned itself off as a SAFETY FEATURE! The friends that loaned us the Squeezo had also e-mailed me back with some advice (as he is also a genius about everything mechanical), but Ed had pretty much already taken care of everything. So, thankfully, no more sulking necessary and no new garbage disposal purchase was necessary! I still haven't gotten to the rest of the applesauce, though.
What else happened this week? Hmm....Bible Study, Ed worked late, orthodontist appointments (Bethany had her initial consult, but thankfully the orthodontist said she has to wait a year before she can start her 24+ months of head gear and braces), shopping at the mall on Friday night, and...
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas at our house!!! Today it was beautiful weather, so, after doing a bunch of stuff in town, I sent Ed out to put up the Christmas lights! No, we won't turn them on yet, but Ed was very thankful to put them up in 50 degree weather rather than 35 degree weather like it will probably be in a couple weeks! Here are some pictures for your enjoyment! For some reason, they got uploaded in backwards order, so you're starting with the end of the project and working your way forward...just FYI. ;)

This is a picture of another project I've been working on...it's an online digital scrapbooking/writing/journaling/family heritage kind of class and so far it's been mostly about assembling this little binder. More to come on this in the next couple of weeks, I'm sure...
These are some glimpses of some Christmas secrets I am working on...though I doubt any of you that are reading this will get them...it's for teacher gifts and such...

Oh, and this is a picture of the lawn as we were trying to organize the Christmas lights and figure out which ones worked, which ones didn't, which ones were new, which ones were old, which ones didn't match, etc.