Saturday

I had to work for a couple of hours this morning. It has been a while since I have done work on the weekend, not counting travel time for business trips. This work was participating in the training of some subcontractors for the project I am working on.

Early this afternoon, Mel, Emma, and I went shopping. We had to get a birthday present for Mel's cousin's five-year-old daughter. After buying a Barbie doll for her at Target, we went to JCPenney because I wanted to try on some jeans so I would know the style and size to ask for when I complete the Christmas list that my mother would like me to complete. Because of the good price on the jeans, I ended up buying one pair today, although I can still use some more. I also ended up buying three polo shirts. I normally would not have made such a purchase so close to Christmas, but it was a deal I couldn't pass on. I was able to get three thirty-six-dollar polo shirts for $2.54 each! This will make a good addition to my wardrobe as I haven't added many new polo shirts in quite a while.

After our shopping expedition at Westdale Mall, we went to the birthday party at Pump It Up in southwest Cedar Rapids. Pump It Up is a place where kids can go and play on inflatable slides, bouncing areas, and other similar things. The hour and a half we were there was quite enough. The twenty-something children around the age of five seemed to have a great time, although it was a bit noisy.

After the birthday party we headed home so Mel could get ready to go to a RoughRiders game with her friend Penny for Penny's son's sixth birthday party. While Mel was at the hockey game, I had a friend over to visit. We played a few board games. I hadn't seen this friend in a while, so it was good to have him over.

Now that I have finished writing this blog entry, I am going to check if Emma has gotten back to sleep so that I might be able to go back to bed for the evening. Hopefully she sleeps through until morning. That would be a nice change from her new routing of waking up at midnight and at three in the morning as she has the past few nights.