7 Quick Takes Friday

Thanks to Jen for hosting.

1. I might as well rename my blog to "7 Quick Takes every Friday." That's all I have time to post anymore. However, I have been managing to write fairly regular blog posts for the Catholic Phoenix blog (turns out I'm more motivated to write if I know it'll actually be read), so that's progress, at least.

2. As my birthday is 11/3, Collin's is 12/24, Elanor's is 1/13, William's is 2/25, and Violet's is 3/5, we're going to do a big group present -- we're going to Disneyland in lieu of buying presents this year. Less clutter for the house is always good! We're leaving 12/18 and will get back 12/22, just in time to host Christmas at our house on 12/25. The plan is to get it cleaned and ready before we go, and then take the kids away so they have less time and opportunity to mess it up. We were thrilled to see that kids 2 and under are free, so we only had to buy passes for ourselves and Elanor (we also got the passes via Collin's Apple employee discount). To further save money, we're staying at a Super 8 about a block from the park (less than $50/night, baby! Woohoo!).

3. Collin has a terrific new work schedule starting in early November -- Fridays, Saturdays, AND Sundays off! We'll get weekends together again, and he'll have both Christmas and his birthday off. It's rare that he gets such a great schedule, so we're pretty thrilled. It couldn't have come at a better time -- we have a lot to do to get the house presentable for Christmas.

4. I love the Netflix app on my iPhone. I can watch TV episodes during my lunch break. My latest favorite is Clean House. (It's not as scary as Hoarders, but still... some of these people need to LET THINGS GO.)

5. We had a parent-teacher conference with Elanor's teacher on Tuesday. The good news is she's very artistic and draws very well for her age; academically, she's dramatically improved from the beginning of the school year. The quasi-bad news is that she's still lagging behind pretty significantly, and doesn't seem to understand a lot of the concepts taught. So, we're going to have her evaluated by the special education team. My mom's a special-ed teacher so I have some idea of what to expect by that, but it still makes me nervous.

6. We made homemade pumpkin-shaped spritz cookies over the weekend, using my Pampered Chef cookie press. Very yummy! We'll have to make some more this weekend.

7. It's Friday and my brain is fried. I can't think of anything for #7. So... here's a cute kid pic instead (Elanor, after her haircut last Saturday).