Roller Coaster Weekend

Roller Coaster Weekend and we are not talking about Cedar Point.
This weekend has been a weekend of Ups and Downs..
If I close my mind and eyes to the bad of this weekend I have had a really nice weekend.. but with each enjoyable moment something went wrong. Still I guess I had a good weekend.

On Friday night my family, my parents, my brother, my uncle and my grandparents all went out to dinner at Ryan's steakhouse. We were celebrating the November birthday in the family.. My sister starts us off with birthdays but she lives in TX so she wasn't with us.. Her birthday is the 1st. Then My birthday is the 9th(still can't get over that I'm turning 35 years old on Friday) Then My Grandpa will be turning 75 years old on the 14th and Mr Man will be 8 years old on the 15th.
Dinner was nice, food was good.. I ate to much ..
The bad thing that happened with dinner isn't really too bad.. We had made reservations for the 12 of us but they forgot our reservations so we had to wait about 30 minutes while they got our table together.. and the place was packed and we were rubbing elbows with the table next to ours.
After dinner the men went home and us ladies and Mr Man went shopping. DH took Little Man home with him, my dad and brother and grandpa went home to watch basketball.
We went to Toy's R Us.. where I picked up 2 Christmas gifts( would love to tell you what they are but Princess reads my blog from time to time and though the gifts are not for her I don't want to tempt her with stuff to hold over her sister and brother LOL) and the last item I needed for Mr Man's birthday gifts. Then headed over to target where I didn't get anything but had fun looking and getting ideas.. by then it was 9:30pm and I knew I needed to head home because DH had been up since the night before with only a 2 hour nap so I knew he would want to go to bed early. I got home about 10pm to find DH and Little Man sound asleep, DH on the couch and Little Man on the love seat. It was so cute.
Princess went and spent the night with my grandma and Mr Man and Sweet Pea went home with my mom to spend the night.

Saturday morning rolled around and DH surprised me with saying "Lets go shopping" YEAH... I wanted to try to get some early bird sales.. Bad news which didn't bother me too much was the items I wanted were gone when I got there. My MIL had given me my birthday card and money already so I was looking for something for myself.. I haven't gotten any new church close in a few years.. So i bought a new skirt and top.. The skirt was a $50 skirt on sale for $19 YEAH!!!! love a deal.. Then I found a nice top that looks so good with it.. Also got a new pair of jeans and another Christmas gift for the kids. Then we went out for lunch at CiCi's yummy.. once again I ate too much food.. and I wounder why I don't lose any weight.
Then we came home and got our children and my parents came over and we spent the rest of the day moving cabinets around in my kitchen to make more room for a bigger refrigerator.

It was nice out so DH had the kids out playing in the leaves(pictures to come of that later)
DH also thought this would be a wonderful time to start hanging the thousands of Christmas lights he hangs every year.. This is where the roller coaster rides starts to go down hill..
The lights are missing.. Not just missed places.. we think someone got into our garage the night I forgot to close the door.. and our outside Christmas stuff is GONE.. Only Christmas stuff that wasn't taken that we stored out there is my lighted reindeer's and the Christmas trees and that is because those were up in the rafters.. It makes me sick to think about those lights being gone.. every year we have about 2 thousand lights out in our yard and there year there won't be any because we don't have the money this year to replace all those lights.. and I'm sure DH after having such a huge light display isn't going to want to just do a tree or two of lights. I'm just trying not to think about this too much.. but I know it is going to bum me out completely when other people are turning on there Christmas lights and I don't have any to sit by the window and look out at to enjoy.

Today we were to go to my IL's church for a visit, they have been asking us to go but we have our own church so it has been about 6 or 7 years since we went with them. Little Man and the time change didn't work very well, 1st He went to bed early then kept waking up though the night.. The woke up at 5:30am and wouldn't go back to sleep.. I was like a zombie this morning. But things started looking up.. everyone outfits looked so nice and the girls hair and mine was working well for us and everyone just looked picture perfect and we were leaving on time.. something that hardly ever happens when all 6 of us are trying to get dressed in a house with one bathroom.

Then it happened the next big hill, or should I say the biggest drop. We back out of our drive way on the way to church and put the car in drive and NOTHING happens it doesn't move at all. we put it in park and try again nothing the van is dead. It starts but will not go in drive or reverse or anything. DH pushes it back into our drive way and there it sits. We don't have the money to get it fixed. What little savings we had saved we used up when DH was sick and off work for those 6 weeks and he has been back to work for a month now but we have been getting all caught up on bills and not saving.. UGH!!!!!!!!!! We are 99% sure its the transmission again we had a brand new one put in about 4 years ago. I guess I just need to find out what is wrong with it and what the cost would be, the van still paid off yet but we drive it like crazy and it now has 187457 miles on it.. So I don't want to put an arm and a leg into it.. but at the same time we need to have a van we have 6 people in our family and DH drives a ford Taurus Right now we will have to borrow my grandmas car or my parents van if we want to go anywhere as a family.
~sigh~ what a pain.. and to top all this off we didn't make it to church anywhere this morning.. not our church and not my IL's church.. I did spend that time cleaning my kitchen and dinning room spotless.. It's my thing after all.. LOL.. this is not a joke, when I'm upset I clean.. it's what I do..

Tonight the kids and I went to PM church and awanas.. and this made our weekend end on a good night..
It was award nights at awanas.. and Though Sweet Pea name wasn't called because My SIL forgot to call the head leader to tell them that Sweet Pea did say the verses to her,(that is a different story but Sweet Pea is ok with it unlike last Sunday) Mr Man got his jewels for his pin tonight.. AND THEN!!!!!!!!!!!
Mr Man was also named Clubber Of The Month.. this is a big honor in awanas.. and he is thrilled..

So my weekend with it's Ups and Downs ended on a good note.. Now I'll just not think about the stolen Christmas lights... and I'll figure out what we will do with the Van tomorrow..