Love of a Grocery Store

Exhaustion is eating my brain. I need to figure out how to sleep more during the week so I can spend more time on Friday not sleeping or resting. And my answer is most definitely NOT go to bed earlier. That would be nearly impossible! I'm often in bed asleep by 8pm. My problem is waking up for the day at 2am. That's not bad when I get 6 full hours of sleep, but when I'm up until 10 or later multiple nights and STILL wake up at 2am, that gets to be a problem! It's just that I soooooo love my alone time in the middle of the night! Reading books or blogs, writing emails, cuddling with cats in my chair... Nobody needs anything or talks to me, I can give my full concentration to what I'm doing. It's hard to trade this time for something as "unproductive" as sleep!

Moving on, my kids have fallen completely and totally in love with a grocery store. A new HyVee opened a couple weeks ago and it's pretty much all they talk about. Gene took them to check it out before their Tuesday swimming lesson. They only had a few minutes to look around, but they were VERY impressed. Very. I took them to their Thursday swimming lesson and when we found it was cancelled, they begged to go back to HyVee. Ok, fine. The place has a large food court with Chinese, Italian, soups and sandwiches, chicken, meatloaf, etc. and a huge salad bar. They have a large dining area. I agreed to quickly look around the store and then get carry out salad bars and go home. (I was sweaty, stinky and disgusting in my zoo uniform.) I found a few really good "grand opening" deals, but otherwise wasn't at all impressed with the layout of the store, the selection of food or especially the prices. We loaded up our carry out salad containers and went home. Yummy! But I'll never do carry out again because Kaylin LOADED her plate with cantaloupe and strawberries and I ended up paying $8.50 for hers when I could have gotten her a dine-in unlimited buffet for $4.99.

Friday night my parents came to take the kids to dinner. Gene was at a baseball game, so I went with them. It was Kaylin's turn to choose where to eat and she chose HyVee. I think we'll be regulars. I've rarely seen the girl eat that much and most of what she did eat was fruit, fruit and more fruit! Logan wasn't quite as enthusiastic, but he also ate a lot off of the salad bar. I'm sure it was one of the more healthy restaurant meals they've had!

We then went to Gordman's for new backpacks for school. Yaayyy! They had what we needed and I got two decent quality backpacks that will (hopefully) last the entire year for ~$22. And the kids who were quite positive this shopping trip would kill them didn't actually die!

So far, my car has been great. I finally figured out how to reduce the bass on my stereo so I'm no longer driving around with my speakers thumping to Lite Rock 107. That was driving me nuts!

I walked into work Sunday morning to find four adorable baby piglets. Mama hog looked so huge and ready to give birth, I separated her from rest of the hog group for many nights before the piglets arrived. I was pretty much to the point I thought I was imagining her pregnancy signs and she wasn't actually pregnant, just chubby. It was good to know I'm not completely insane :) The piglets appear strong and healthy and are very active and nursing well. As usual, I'm completely in love. I'm always a sucker for babies, but these piglets... I wish I could spend my entire work day standing in front of their viewing window making sure every single zoo visitor sees them and admires their extreme cuteness and exclaims how lucky they are for coming to the zoo on this particular day to witness this adorable wonder!