busy, busy day - busy week!

This has felt like a busy, hectic week but in a good way. Today after dropping Ash off at school for the day, I called Cathy and asked if she wanted to ride over to Cinci with us to shop. My friend Rhonda had to go to the dentist unexpectedly today, so no Lexington trip. I wasn't even sure I wanted to head out of town. But, I haven't been to Rookwood Commons in ages and knew they had several stores I needed to hit - it is an outdoor shopping mall type area, very nice. We ate lunch at PF Changs and then hit Motherhood Maternity (new nursing bras, NO I AM NOT PREGGO!), Gap, Pier One, Wild Oats, Old Navy, and GameStop where I got John his birthday present. Since he doesn't read this blog I can say what it is - a Nintendo Wii! WOOHOO!! I am way excited. I have secretly wanted one since Ginger brought hers to Hot Springs during our October meet-up. I think we are all going to absolutely love it - I got a fishing game and also an Olympic Games game that is very physical. It will be so fun! John's b-day is Super Bowl Sunday, the 3rd. He will most likely get his gift early though. :) Cathy and I also hit Starbucks and Cold Stone Creamery on the way home - can we say double shot of YUM?! And on the way home in the car we just happened to come up behind my friend Rhonda - it was quite hilarious as she had no clue we were behind her and I called her, first thing I said was "Can't you go any faster?!" She had gone to her dental appt and then over to Florence Mall to shop for a bit. Allie was a complete angel all day long while traveling and shopping. What a good girl! Once we got home though, after being home about an hour, she totally bottomed out and was in complete meltdown mode! Couldn't get her to bed fast enough. After Asher's bath I was getting him ready for bed, and he was jabbering on about school today and how his teacher aide had to go home early! She has Shingles, yikes! I was asking him would Ms Jo (a sub) be there tomorrow, and he said yes - he loves her! - then he said Ms Pauletta has the chicken pox and I said yes, that means she has an itchy rash all over her body, like bug bites, and he said Ouch! Then he asked something else and I answered him and he looked at me all wide eyed and said, "Wow, Mommy, you know everything! How do you know everything?" I cracked up and told him because I am a Mommy and Mommies know everything, so remember that! LOL!! John is still upstairs fighting with our coffee machine. It is a Capresso C3000 espresso machine that steams milk for lattes, etc, etc. Basically like the machines at Starbucks except it doesn't pipe in the water line, it has a tank. Anyway we have had it 2.5 years and lately the pressure in it has been messing up. We have been fiddling with it and finally tonight we called the company. They say at first that it is on a recall list, and it can be repaired free of charge which is awesome as the warranty was only for a year on it. Or she says we can upgrade but that machine is only worth $350 to them - ouch - as we paid much more than that for it, and it was refurbished. We say we will call them back with our decision, which ended up being we would send it for free repairs because as tempting as it is to get a brand new upgraded machine, we don't want to spend money on it because HELLO it will still make the coffee the exact same way as our current one. So we call back and I tell the same gal we want to send it for repairs. Well come to find out she thought John said the Capresso C1000, which is a realllly old machine. And ours is NOT on the recall list therefore the service charge would be a flat $225 and there are no available upgrades for it, but that ours is a really nice machine (duh!) and in her opinion worth fixing. Well John was NOT happy and we said we would call back, we weren't sure what we would do. So he decided to tear the thing apart himself and has it in a zillion odd pieces and has put it back together and taken it apart maybe 3 times already? And it still says "malfunction" which before did not say that. He is quite frustrated with it, and I reminded him about a half hour ago that it is just about bedtime! So it may have to sit in pieces and be worked on more later. I already miss my lattes. Tomorrow is Library day and we plan to meet some friends there and might go to lunch afterwards, then I think Allie and I will hang out at Cathy's so Allie can nap while we wait for Asher to get out of school while we are in town. I need to pick up our mail as that has been a week or so. I am tired of held mail! Eventually we will get a locked box although the general consensus is it's the sub mail carrier either stealing or misdelivering. Not much you can do for that, huh? Supposed to get some snow in the morning but I don't think it will be enough to close schools - certainly not St Pat! Mason County seems to close if two flakes fall. Have I mentioned I love snow?! :)