Placemats and Alias

Today was my birthday day of love with the husband (not to be confused with my actual birthday which is tomorrow). He told me he'd take me anywhere and we could do anything I wanted.  I have been thinking about my dining room table and how we have never eaten on the wood part of the table itself.  It has a protective "table top" over it and then I keep a vinyl tablecloth over that.  It is such a nice table--maybe one of the nicest things we own (it was a house warming gift from Kevin's parents when we moved in 8 years ago) so I've been paranoid about the top of it getting scratched.  Anyway, I decided I would like to have our Christmas Eve/my birthday dinner on the beautiful wood table, so one of our stops was to Ross for some placemats.  I had to dig around but I found some I really liked.  I headed to the checkout and couldn't believe the line, in the middle of the day, on a Monday.  All those blue poles are attached to baskets and all those baskets are attached to people standing in a line that weaved around a couple of times and then went all the way to the back of the store.  Brutal.

I almost set my placemats down and walked out but I was committed to my table so I stuck it out.

I am a little OCD about a few things in my life.  If I'm going somewhere I have to leave the house picked up and reasonably clean because I can't stand to come home to a messy house.  I am serious, I. Can't. Stand. It.  At the conclusion of my birthday day of love I came home to a messy house.  I was ready to let a few of the kids have it when I walked into my bedroom and saw this...

My little snowman being cuddled by her big sister.  So sweet.  Then I headed downstairs to find the responsible ones (Emmy is hiding under the blanket)...

They had spent the entire day watching this (possibly the greatest TV series of all time)...

I have been telling Emmy she needs to watch Alias for years.  She finally listened and started watching it last month and now she has no life.  It made me so happy that they were loving my favorite show of all time that I let them off the hook and cleaned up the house myself. 

Sometimes this is what family prayer looks like at our house.