we had a great day yesterday!  We drove up to Spring to my cousin’s house where we ate like piggies, enjoyed each other’s company and watched the tu vs. Texas A&M game.  I’m not a big football fan, much preferring a good hockey game, but I enjoyed watching the game with all my Aggie cousins.  From what I understand, it was still a respectable showing by the Aggies even though the final score was Longhorns 49/Aggies 39.  Eighteen of the Aggies playing last night were FRESHMAN, which essentially means there were a bunch of kids six months out of high school, giving the No. 3 team in the country a fairly tough run for their money.  Not too shabby, I’d say.  The scoring was back and forth, so the suspense factor was decent and you can’t help but think it’s going to be a team to watch next year.  No one likes to see a team get pummeled to death (least ways no one with a heart) and so it was a good game.

I made a carrot cake from scratch — it was supposed to be a “surprise” birthday cake for my guy (whose birthday is December 4), but I wasn’t thinking and set it out with the other desserts.  One of my cousins didn’t know that I’d planned for us all to sing “Happy Birthday” to my guy and cut a big slice out of it for her husband before anyone else started getting dessert.  Guess that was partially my fault for not keeping it wrapped up until the right time!  It was a really good cake though, and I think I will definitely be making it again.  It had grated carrots, pineapple, coconut, chopped walnuts, and golden raisins in it.  Super yummy!

I also did a cracker and cheese tray – with a bit of a twist – a lady in our area sells homemade jams and jellies at the county fair and she has a Raspberry Chipotle jelly that is just to die for.  I spread a generous layer of the jelly over a softened block of cream cheese and served it with Ritz, Club, and Wheat Thin crackers.  It was delicious and everyone really enjoyed it.

Today we ran errands – we didn’t do any “Black Friday” shopping to speak of.  AJ dropped his Jeep off to have some work done on it.  Not quite two years ago he had to have the rear axle replaced and apparently the one the shop put on there was damaged (it was a used part) … he kept meaning to take it back, but the repair was done in another town when he was attending a teachers’ in-service training and well, you know how that goes.  Because the replacement axle was not right, his tires were wearing a lot faster than they should have for the amount of driving he does.  When he went in to our local auto place (part of the chain that did the work in the other town), the manager of the local place didn’t charge him for this most recent tire because he knew they should not be wearing like that.  He also got on the phone with the other place to find out what happened.  Well, the gist of it has now become a his word against their word kind of thing because so much time has passed.  My guy was pretty peeved because he has been a good customer over the years and because the original “repair” was almost $2,000.  Our local shop, who in truth is not responsible for any of this, wanted to do something to resolve the problem.  So they worked out a deal – my husband will pay $600 toward another ACCEPTABLE axle, and the local shop will cover the remaining expense and provide the labor to make it good. 

After we dropped the Jeep off, we grabbed breakfast at IHOP and stopped in Best Buy to order Jami’s Christmas gift.  She has no idea what she is getting and I am going to have to be READY to catch the expression on her face when she opens her gift.  She’s been saving her money toward a laptop computer — AJ told her that he would match whatever she saved up.  Well, we initially were looking at laptops in the $400 – $500 range.  But the fact is, PC’s are a pain in the backside and I have never owned one that I didn’t end up hating the stupid thing and cursing it (in the mildest manner, of course …)  I’ve had my Mac for three years and still LOVE it.  So we decided to get her a Macbook.  The entry level one that we were looking at was sold out, but the next step up was only $200 more, so it wasn’t too bad of a price increase and worth the investment in my opinion, if for no other reason than we won’t be suffering the guaranteed headaches that a Windows-based product is bound to have.  I also feel like I can protect her more fully from the garbage “out there” because Mac has such great parental controls on their machines.  There will be some serious “rules” that go with having such a great piece of equipment, though.  She won’t be hauling the thing around just anywhere she likes – she will definitely have to get clearance from us before taking it for sleepovers or whatever.  $1200 on a computer for a 14 year old is a pretty pricey investment, and so I don’t think we are being unreasonable by laying down some ground rules.  The thing that gives me peace of mind about the purchase is Best Buy’s 18 months same as cash on purchases over $400.  We’ve used this on a couple of purchases and since AJ’s been paying our bills, he is very good at getting things paid off before the interest kicks in.  We purchased my washing machine Memorial Day (@ $900) and have until December 2010 to pay it off, but he’s already paid about 1/2 of it down.  And he will be collecting the $200 that Jami had saved toward the “cheaper” computer to put toward the Mac.  So it’s all good.

Then we hit the paperback bookstore and Hastings to see what we could get for books that we didn’t need cluttering up our shelves any longer.  We ended up with a $17 credit at the paperback bookstore, and then my guy got a $14 gift card to Hastings for books he sold back.  I got a $17 gift card, and I also managed to get a $10 gift card for my sister for some books that she didn’t want any longer.  So that was a good deal all the way around.

He’s off to Galveston to do some work on his dad’s house and Jami is visiting her grandmother until tomorrow.  So I guess I’d better get busy and do something else productive, too!  Have a wonderful weekend, y’all!