Kicking off the new year...

The year ended with a great aunt of mine passing away. Which means the new year starts with a funeral...Mom flew in from FL for the service which worked out as Michael had decided to take the 3 kids out for Daddy/Kiddie day..

Mom and I started the day out on the most altruistic way.. We donated blood.. Okay SHE donated the blood. My blood retrieval did not go as planned. Initially I started a good strong flow then it trickled out. Three different nurses and techs checked and could not figure it out. I was set up for a double red cell donation and they could not even get a full single donation out of me. The decided that it was not going to happen and stopped it. When they were unhooking me and tearing the tubing apart they figured it out.. Blood Clots. They tech must have jarred my needle when she was trying to get it in proper position b/c it started to prematurely clot and there was a clot in the needle and a HUGE one stuck in the beginning of the tubing. I was bummed. I was donating like I do a few times a year.. but this time there was a gas card promotion and since I was doing a double donation I was due to get 2 $25.00 gas cards... In the end I got them b/c I was there to donate and it was totally out of my control. THEN b/c mom went to donate with me she got a card too.. She tossed it my way so that is $75.00 in gas cards.. AWESOME!!!!!

Then we continued on.. Took her to get her glasses adjusted, grabbed a quick lunch and off to the memorial service. After the service we ran to Chapel Hill and I managed to buy 3 pairs of jeans/pants at LB. This is amazing for me b/c I now pretty much double my pants supply.. Sad.. I know...
I attempted to buy some boots... Boots are pretty important in Ohio. My zipper busted the first real snow we had. Nice....No luck with that little task.. Thank you Payless, Famous Footwear and Target for NOT stocking a full selection of super huge footwear...

After returning home we go to listen to all the stories the kids told, how they ate at Cici's pizza, shopped at the Dollar Tree and went to the Planetarium and Discovery Museam at McKinley Monument.

The day ended with mom entertaining the kids with Perfection and Scrabble. Now as long as Maddie doesn't really have a sore ear.. ALL will stay good...