Randomness from a year ago

Happy New Year! I was thinking a recap of the past year but I didn't feel like sitting down to try to think of all the things we've done this year. But then I set up my new calendar and transferred all the birthdays and saw a few of the things we did in 2009. (Hopefully all the birthdays are transferred...I had a little help from Jack and Casey with this project. There were stickers involved so they thought it was fun.) Then I cleaned out my receipts from January and that was also a reminder of some of the things we did last January.

2009 started off in Philly, visiting with Pat's parents. We didn't go out for New Year's but enjoyed the night on the couch eating leftovers. There were some mozzarella sticks from Carrabba's that were delicious. (This was not in the day planner...I have a weird memory that allows me to recall things I ate on specific nights over a year ago.) We also visited the Please Touch Museum with the kids on a very busy Friday.

Other things from January include dinner with friends, refinancing our house, replacing A/C filters (just writing what was in the planner), playdates and playgroups. My sister visited at the end of January and we went to the zoo, the aquarium and probably did some shopping. Pat was gone for most of January but when he returned, he was sporting a mustache. We met him at McDonald's for lunch on the day he returned and Jack wouldn't even look at him. He hid in my lap the whole time. When Pat came home, after having shaved the mustache, Jack was happy and said, "Daddy left his mustache on the boat."

Now that I'm three paragraphs into this, it's just going to be a recap of last January...

Anyway, according to the receipts on file for last January, I bought...

- cleaning supplies and cough drops from Target

- air filters (an obvious pre-requisite to the changing of the filters), a potty, and socks for Casey from Wal-Mart

- groceries at the commissary 3 times, Wal-Mart once and Food Lion a couple times

- a haircut

- onesies at Carter's (should do that this January too since Casey has no undershirsts)

- a winter jacket for Jack (which we bought big so he could wear it this year too)

- jeans at the Banana Republic outlet (they fell apart after 3 months...so much for the bargain)

- a box to put photos in from Michael's (I think it's still empty)

- a new hair dryer (to replace the one I've had since high school), playdoh and some random dollar items at Target

- more random things from Target

- some picture frames from the JCPenney outlet (gave them as Christmas presents this year - that's early shopping)

We also had dinner out at Olive Garden, La Bella Pizza and Buffalo Wild Wings. After seeing all the Target receipts, I remember that I was going there every weekend with the kids to kill time while Pat was gone. It also caused me to buy a lot of random things. We would walk up and down the toy aisle and the kids would touch all the buttons on all the toys. Then I would cruise the rest of the aisles searching for things I "needed."

I could also go get my menu from last January and tell you what we were eating then too, but I think we've probably had a good enough glimpse into last January. This January looks to be the opposite of last in terms of Pat being home. He's getting ready to transfer to another ship and gets some time off in between so we'll be seeing a lot of him. We have a little vacation planned and I have a bunch of appointments I need to make while I have someone to watch the kids.

Here's to a great January 2010!