DVD Player on the Dark Side

Here is a little round up of the week...

Today Madeline and I spend much of the day at the church, decorating for Advent.  It's a huge job, but a huge transformation, and there were quite a few youth out to help.  I'll post pictures sometime if I remember to take some.

We also went to meet a little girl that M is going to babysit next week.  Her first real 'other than family and small group' babysitting job.  The family goes to our church and we will all be at the Christmas Banquet together - we also live quite close, so it's a great set up for them, and for her.

I'm in 'making' mode, but it's all for Christmas, so I can't show off anything yet!  It has been nice to sit and relax and be productive at the same time.

I got a photo of 7 months, a few days late...  I'm wearing the same clothes as in the 6 months shot so I can compare month to month.

Baby is still doing fine - moving differently now that there's less room.  (S)he had the hiccups twice now - kind of a funny feeling.  I've been feeling fine, but I do notice that I run out of steam sometimes.  I had a few naps this week, including one on a pew at work!  I weighed myself this morning and have gained 25 lbs so far.  I gained 30 with M, I believe.  We're getting closer all the time to having the house ready - Sean's been steadily picking away at the fixing up of stuff.

We went to Sean's work Christmas party last night - it was dinner and a show at the casino.  They give you oodles of time between eating and when the show starts - they want you to go spend some money on the games is my guess.  We did a walk through, and I find it just really sad.  Yeah, some will win a bit here and there, but for the most part, it's just people throwing money away.  The rest of the night - dinner and show and visiting with the co-workers - was not bad.

Madeline had pyjama day at school this week.  She didn't have any slippers, and I remembered a couple pairs of 'Granny Slippers' I had stashed away, so I dug those out.  This has been her every day since then:

'Granny Slippers' because they were knit by MY Granny.  AKA Elf Slippers.

The other end of her - the frog eye covers are a recent and every night addition to her pj's.  She uses them actually over her eyes all night long, and as a headband like this lots of other times.

The reason she's reading on the couch ( I just took those shots) is because our movie was a dud - AGAIN!  We borrowed the Star Wars Trilogy a few weeks ago, watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes back both two weekends ago, and watched the Return of the Jedi last Sunday night.  We got half way through it when it started acting up and freezing, and we had to concede defeat.  The next night at small group, we noticed our friends also had the set, so we borrowed theirs.  Tonight we had enough time to watch the final half, only to have it zap out at the exact same spot!!  Different discs, same player - is it unreasonable to think that the machine has it out for the Rebel Alliance?  Maybe it's the Ewoks it doesn't like - it quit right between 'Speeder Bike Chase' and 'Leia Meets Wicket.'  Sigh.  Someday I hope we get to finish it - Madeline's classical education will not be complete if she doesn't know what an Ewok is!

That's our week & a little snapshot of our lives right now.  Thanks for checking in!

Question: How much is the going rate for babysitters for you / your friends / in your area?  We're curious, because M and I both thought $5/hour would be fine, but apparently some think that's slave labour wages!

What's your favorite Star Wars moment? (Each of the three times I've typed that, I've typed Star WARD.)  Hmmm... maybe if baby's a girl??