I HIT THE POWERBALL!

..and one white ball which adds up to a $4 jackpot! I can’t wait until all the numbers on my ticket match the ones on the screen! First we will hire a babysitter and go out to dinner. Then we will buy everyone new bras, underwear, socks and pajamas. And shoes. And throw away everything else! All the money would be invested and we would take out just 50% of what we are currently living on and enjoy the small things, like daily coffee from Starbucks and a movie every weekend. A movie twice a year would be an indulgence for us!

Then we would take that road trip we have been planning to see the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, Yellowstone, and of course Las Vegas and Hershey PA! Forget about the sandwiches from the trunk. Applebee’s here we come!

After a year we would start to enjoy some of the interest that had accrued by secretly paying off people’s mortgages. This is where the details get a little fuzzy. We could hire an attorney to do just that, or we could find out what people owe, what their total debt is and agree to pay it all off if they sign a non-disclosure statement. Wouldn’t that be fun! If we only play with the interest this cold go on forever and still leave a fortune for our children to inherit. Ahh.

This weekend was fairly un-eventful, save the birthday party Joshua threw for Coconut complete with a “pin the nose on the Koala” game and a piñata fashioned from a cardboard box and filled with Halloween candy. He baked a pan of brownies, from which I had one, and the rest were devoured by the children, and presumably Coconut and Marshmallow. Perhaps those stuffed Koalas have a much larger appetite than I imagine. Maybe a lifetime of eating nothing but eucalyptus leaves has left them feeling less than satisfied and therefore capable of eating a tray of brownies in one sitting.

Gary and I were able to do some cleaning up stairs and get most all of our summer clothes packed away in the attic. That was a huge relief to have them out of our bedroom. Six people in one house who all welcome hand me downs can accumulate a ton of clothes! Gary has been enjoying taking the things that no longer fit and hanging them on our front fence with a free sign. He gets great enjoyment watching people take things. Our neighbor told us that a woman from “Coat’s for Kids” came and took all the winter jackets he had out there.

I spent the weekend preparing a little for the holiday season. Our family theme is Conserve (funds) and Eliminate (clutter) so the plan is to give entirely homemade (and mostly consumable) gifts. The kids and I were able to get some of our projects done, which was very exciting. The perishable stuff will need to wait until December, but there is a lot that we can get done in advance.

I have this theory that the magazine editors are not terribly creative, and are only able to put out magazines every month by recycling ideas. I wasn’t sure if it was on a two or three year cycle, but I was positive that they just take the same ideas and change them around a little, take some new pictures and voila, a current edition. Fully believing my own ideas I no longer subscribe to these books but instead keep back issues in the basement. Every season I pull out that month’s edition of all the years of that particular month. A few weeks ago I posted a recipe my mother had found in a current (2005) edition of Woman’s Day Magazine. Well, while browsing for some new recipes I found the exact same recipe in Woman’s Day 2002! Ha, I’ve got your number!