Packing & Cleaning & Cooking

Emerson woke up super early, unfortunately, but she was quiet and sweet and let me snooze on the couch while she watched some videos snuggled up next to me. Finally around 8am, we got dressed and ready, and headed to Donut Kingdom for some treats and coffees.

Then we took the delicious donuts over to my parents old house (that hasn’t officially hit the market yet after buying their new house a few months ago), to help them do some major cleaning and packing and such.

And I found a couple of old boxes of my stuff from high school, that was really fun to go through. It was full of mostly old clothes and shoes that I didn’t want or need, plus my old Discman cd player I loved so much, but I also found tons of old framed photos. I pulled all the prints from the frames, and ended up donating mostly all of the rest of it to Goodwill.

This was me with my varsity cheerleading squad, during my junior year of high school, circa 2004.

And this was a bunch of my church girlfriends on a summer trip, probably my sophomore year, circa 2003.

This girl is still literally hopping and jumping everywhere and anywhere, allllll the time.

After spending a few hours helping around their old house, we picked up our Walmart grocery order, and then headed home. I made Emmie some cheese noodles for lunch, while her and Daddy did a final sanding of the toy chest. This project probably should have been completed in just one weekend, but we’ve stretched it out unnecessarily for about three weeks now, and I’m so ready for it to be done!

After all of her collecting at Grammy’s house this morning, this is what I pulled out of her pocket before nap time, and proof that even little girls like to collect rocks and sticks. Which is actually just like her Mommy, her used to also collect rocks as a little girl.

While she napped, for about two hours, Jeff went out to do some of his on-the-side computer work, and I went to town cleaning the house and washing dishes and doing tons of stuff. I had on my new black tennis shoes, and my headphones in with my audio book, the windows & doors open to let in the cool, fresh air, and I just bee-bopped all around getting so much done.

Then this crazy girl woke up, and wanted snacks and hugs and movies, so we had some fun just hanging out for a while.

Then I got busy getting dinner ready. A friend of ours from church was in a terrible car accident back in December, then spent almost two months in Jacksonville in surgeries and rehab. They came back to town last week, and I signed up on the meal train to bring them a meal tonight. So I made a double recipe of cheesy baked ravioli, so I could take them a pan, and keep a pan for our dinner tonight as well. Emmie sat up at the counter with me while I worked, and she was so cute.

She also found the rest of the chocolate donut holes from this morning…

Then she found some Clorox wipes under the sink and wanted to help clean, so I put that girl to work! 😉 And actually, now that I’m looking at these photos, I realize how dirty the table legs actually are! Looks like I might need to wipe them down myself for real!

We also finally put the final coat of poly top coat, so once it “cures” for a couple of days, we’ll finally move it into Emerson’s room to use for toys and animals.

And this is what I made for dinner! The one of the left was on the top rack, so it got darker, but I put the one on the right back in to keep warm while we delivered the food to our friends, and it got perfectly dark and crispy as well. And it was soooo delicious. Super cheesy, and really flavorful, and great comfort food on a chilly day.

One of my favorite Instagrammer’s shared this the other day, and I’d highly recommend it! I actually used ravioli instead of tortellini (since Walmart didn’t have tortellini today), and it worked out just perfectly.

 

I made Emerson try a few bites of the saucy, cheesy stuff, but she didn’t like it, for whatever strange reason. So she just had some plain ravioli dipped in butter. I had kinda figured she wouldn’t like it, so I had set aside a few to keep plain for her, just in case.

Clearly we have a ton of leftovers, so this’ll be good for lunch at work on Monday!

And thankfully, our water is completely back to normal tonight, so my girl finally got a bath. I even added bubbles, as a special treat.

She LOVES to get wrapped up like a burrito after her bath, and specifically requests it every time.

So fresh & so clean & so precious!

She chose for me to read “Aqualicious” for her bedtime story, and even though it was very long (and I skipped a few pages here and there), she was so sweet and intent listening to the story.

She asked for one more snack before bedtime, so she had about a half a piece of garlic bread we had leftover from dinner. After that, she was ready to give me some sweet loves and snuggle up on my chest for lullabies.

She was easy to get down tonight and then I got into some warm jammies myself, since it’s been such a cool day today! I’ve decided to let the few dishes from tonight just wait until tomorrow, since I already did so much work this afternoon. Going to make some hot lemon tea, and cuddle up with my super soft blanket.