My favorite gift from John:

A special, very unhealthy but fast-to-make treat for breakfast, from “Recipes Old & New, Tried & True, from The City Beautiful Nauvoo”:

“Golden Puffs”

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup milk
1 egg

Stir with fork until mixed. Drop by teaspoon into hot oil and fry until golden brown. Roll in sugar and cinnamon. Eat warm.

Meanwhile Wes has been busy, helping with the present trimmings:

And his favorite new pastime, which involves cleaning out his room and dumping the contents over the railing at the top of the stairs. He must have run out of books after I took the video, because next he started emptying out his hamper of dirty clothes. Yes, every day I carry a big pile of stuff back upstairs.

Today was a special treat: I got to go sans-child to SLC for a Zumba master class. It’s basically an extra-long Zumba class with a few extra incentives like refreshments and giveaways.

I didn’t think to snap any pictures BEFORE we turned all sweaty and un-photogenic…

There were a few other instructors there. Here’s me and Kate.

And me and Laura.

I even won something. I don’t know that I’ve ever won anything in a drawing before. I wasn’t even paying attention when she called my name and it took me a minute to figure out I was a WINNER!

Meet my new Zumba bag:

The other fun thing I got to do today was use a $100 gift certificate we got last Christmas for a swanky furniture/decor store. It was tricky to find things under $100 (or $200) so I wouldn’t spend anything out of pocket, but in the end I picked out some seasonal serving items and a covered dessert platter.

All for free! What is more fun than FREE?

On the way home I was dying of thirst and for once in my life I had no water with me. My brilliant solution: stop by Krispy Kremes and order a dozen donuts plus a cup of water. I have only been to Krispy Kremes once before, and today was the first time I’ve used their drive-through. How many countries in the world feature places where you can drive up to a window and get twelve fresh-baked donuts without even leaving your car? I love America.

спални комплекти

The best fun thing that happened today is we caught Wes on video trying to jump.

…for credit card companies.

That’s the first time I’ve ever said that.

Last week I got a recorded message from our credit card company, which normally I would ignore. But I listened and it asked me to verify if I had used my credit card earlier the same day (it was 9 a.m.) to make a $3 purchase somewhere in Mexico.

Um, no.

So I was transferred to a Fraud Specialist (cool title) who told me there were actually two charges on the card from Mexico, one for $3 and one for $1. She said that fraudsters usually make a few small purchases first to check the card’s authenticity before really going for it. The company immediately canceled the card and issued us a new number.

I know the credit card company keeps on top of these things to save their own legal behind, but I was really grateful they caught this so fast.

Whenever we order something online we use our credit card’s online “ShopSafe” feature that issues a number specifically for our purchase and keeps our real number protected. I’m not sure how our number got stolen. But it was a bit of a reality check for us.

Today was a bizarre day with a bizarre beginning.

It all started at 3 a.m. when I woke up inexplicably awake and hungry. So hungry that no matter how hard I tried to distract myself with soothing, relaxing, sleep-inducing thoughts, my mind continually returned to food. Pancakes, specifically.

This was a little boggling to me since the night before we attended a church Christmas party where I ate a LOT. I had taught Zumba right before and came famished. And pretty much ate my weight in roast beef, real mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, carrots…it was so good.

So as much as I tried to reason myself back to sleep it didn’t work. I finally got up around 4:30 a.m., went downstairs, turned on Christmas music, and made myself pancakes.

When the pancakes were gone I popped in Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and did some online Christmas browsing. (What else are you going to do at 5 a.m.? Something practical like laundry? No way.) I finally crashed on the couch after 6 a.m. until Wes woke up at 7.

The next bizarre thing that happened was that I went shooting.

You heard me.

It was part of a church activity for the guys, and wives were invited. They successfully lured us out into sub-freezing temperatures with the promise of glazed donuts and hot chocolate. Pretty much manna from heaven.

This is the first time I ever held a gun. Do I look like I know what I’m doing?

If you said “no,” you’re right. John helped me and I shot it a couple times before my hands iced over and threatened to fall off. Not only was it FREEZING but there was a storm blowing in, and the wind was fierce.

I didn’t know this about John (and we’ve been married seven years), but the man can shoot. He hit the clay pigeon every time. He only started missing when the fellows were playing Annie Oakley (I know–who knew there were guy shooting games?) for a long time and his own fingers started icing over and threatening to fall off.

Here he is, and if you look closely at the sky you can see the orange clay pigeon that he just shot into three pieces.

Once I had my two shots of glory I was kind of done and joined the rest of the womenfolk in normal womenfolk-type things, like in-depth conversations about menstruation, menopause, and hysterectomies. Good times.

And the bizarreness didn’t stop there. After the activity ended we arranged for our babysitter to stay with Wes longer so we could actually go to a movie together. We never do this. We sneaked in $1 (actually, they’re $1.19 now) chicken sandwiches and bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s for lunch.

We saw Blind Side. I had serious doubts about the film when I saw Sandra Bullock in the previews with blond hair and a twangy southern accent. I was so wrong. SUCH a good movie, such a good story. And Sandra Bullock gave the performance of her life.

We were glad to be home at the end of all this, but we had fun together. Don’t EVEN ask how much I ate today. All I know is that I totally ate enough that I won’t be waking up again tomorrow at 3 for pancakes.