Garden Ridge Opened/There Goes My Budget

At some point last year, I sent up a little prayer asking God to help me be a better steward of my money. He listened, and shorty thereafter Garden Ridge went up in flames.

Temple of holiday decor, flameless candles, glass jars, cheap art, fake plants, pottery, an entire "Seen on TV!" section, obscure and random packaged foods from abroad, tiny little chotchkies. POOF! Up in smoke.

Apparently it was arson, but I'm not claiming any part of that. It happened while I was at Chuy's eating delicious enchiladas with that addictive tomatillo sauce. I saw the smoke, and hoped that it was nearby WalMart on fire and not Garden Ridge, because let's face it, this is Texas and there's a WalMart at every highway exit. But the nearest Garden Ridge is not near enough for me to even know where it is.

But hold on friends (insert trumpet fanfare here). Garden Ridge has re-opened! Wooooo!

I went the other night to check it out, and other than their decision to skip fall decor and go straight to Christmas, I was not disappointed.

Hello, nineteen aisles of cheap plastic Christmas bulbs! Good to see you, entire wall of doormats! I nodded to the eight rows of lamps and shades as I walked down to the reproduction vintage furniture quadrant. Greetings, fake factory cart coffee table! It was great. They even had a whole section of hospital scrubs, which has never made sense to me. But they were there, animal print and all!

And just before I left empty handed, (this was reconnaissance only) I spotted the one item that really epitomizes (1) Garden Ridge, and (2) Texas, the ten foot tall inflatable patriotic Marine Santa.

Welcome back Santa, and Semper Fi.

Antiques, The Zoo, and a Little Upchuck

Friday was a bit of a bust. Kent actually agreed to go to Round Top (antiques galore, junk heaven, Kentie torture chamber of unhappiness) and we decided to make a day of it with Dub. We woke up early (7:30, egad!), packed a lunch, loaded the car up with tie-downs, moving blankets, our hiking backpack for baby, and set off like a herd of turtles.

 We made it about half way there (45 minutes) and suddenly Wes puked ALL OVER himself. Carsick? Mostly milk and toast. MILQUETOAST! It was nasty, nasty, nasty. Of course, I didn't have a change of clothes for him other than some too-small cozy pants that were somewhat dirty and just happened to be in the car. Mother of the Year Award, coming soon!

 We realized that Round Top was not going to happen and that we needed to go back... to the zoo? Yes, to the zoo apparently, because we popped into our house for clothes and then drove 45 minutes to the Houston Zoo which was a flaming inferno of heat and ended up being kinda miserable. We did enjoy watching Wes crawl through a tube under the Piranha tank though. Good times.

 Later, we returned to a hot car that had been baking a puke-covered carseat for 4 hours, so that was fun.

 Saturday felt bad for what his friend Friday had done to me, and so Saturday gave me some rain to make it all better. And it did.



 

 



And a Baby Makes Three.

In August of last year I sat in front of a high-profile fertility doctor while he told me that I had about a 4% chance of conceiving a baby. Apparently he was wrong, because unbeknownst to me, I was already in the family way and cooking up a bambino. Fast forward to March of the following spring, and I managed to deliver Wesley Aaron Anderson into the world. So here we are, now with a 6 month-old and a foggy memory of a skeptical doctor.