Jingle bells, jingle bells....cough, cough, cough

Since I still wasn't feeling well, Monday was a quiet day.  I managed to get the rest of my Christmas wrapping done and all most of the gifts moved to the spare room closet (out of the reach of a little visitor). 

This cold kicked my butt for much of the week but by Tuesday I was feeling a bit of cabin fever.  I headed out to Walmart to print a few pictures, to Staples to print my Christmas letter, to Shopper's to post the Christmas cards and letters, and to Safeway to pick up the last couple of gift cards.  Hooray, Christmas preparations, with the exception of a bit of baking, is complete!

A little rant here.  I have printer at home, but my color cartridge is pretty much done.  I could have picked up another color cartridge but that would have cost me at least $75, or I could buy a new printer with a cartridge for a similar price. It's crazy that the cartridge alone is as expensive as the printer.  Since I don't do a lot of color printing AND I have a perfectly fine printer/scanner/copier I decided to print the letters at Staples instead.  It was pretty easy, they have self-serve kiosks, and you pay for both the time used on the computer as well as the copying.  My cost was about $25 so I can do this for three years before buying another cartridge or printer is an economic possibility.

Thankfully by Wednesday I was feeling some better as D and Eli came to visit.  I have to be on my toes with that little guy*.  They were here to pick up Eli's dad from his flight late that evening.  I had met my friend C for coffee that morning, and when I returned to the house they were there and Eli was busily eating me out of house and home lunch. That child has a very good appetite!  

His mother ran out to run an errand; while she was away, Eli and I made a small batch of cookies. 
These are brown sugar shortbread with a surprise in the center.  I flattened the cookies, Eli dropped in a few chocolate chips, and then I wrapped the cookie around the chips.  In the meantime, Eli continued to eat the chocolate!  He enjoyed a couple cookies later that afternoon.

It was D's birthday on Thursday so since she was here we ordered in Chinese food for dinner from her favorite local restaurant.  We ordered a dinner for three and an order of ginger beef as it is a family fave.  Eli has never tasted it so D put a piece on his plate, he picked it up, set it down, and she ate it.  She introduces new foods this way, he'll touch, then next time he'll often taste it, and if he likes it the third time he asks for more.  He does enjoy fried rice, chicken balls, and ate a bit of the vegetable chop suey.  There was enough food that I sent some home with D, kept some for my son and I, and we all were able to enjoy it the following night for dinner.  There was even enough chop suey left over, that I added some more veg to it and made a lunch for myself.

I did manage to get off my duff on Thursday, pretty much had to as I had an early nail appointment that morning.  I got some laundry done, made up the bed with fresh sheets and looked longingly at it as I would have liked to have climbed back in, cleaned the kitchen, changed the cat litter, and finally finished a third crocheted snowflake.  I pinned the snowflakes to a piece of cardboard and tried to spray them with some fabric stiffener.  I was stymied as Eli had pulled the sprayer off the bottle!  But they do seem to be (mostly) holding their shape.  

I didn't go for dinner with my friend C on Friday as she had something come up.  It was another quiet day as I continued to battle this cold.  I think I've gone through 2 full boxes of Kleenex and are well into the third.  It's annoying as I'd like to be finishing off my baking, but that's not happening while I've still got this cold.  Thankfully I have lots of programs PVR'ed to watch, a crocheting project to work on, and I don't need to leave the house.  

I'll post this on Saturday because the weekend will be pretty boring.  :)  I'll share this photo my brother sent me from one of his runs in the valley. Have a great weekend and week ahead everyone!

*Funny story - I had left the gifts for my brother and his family in a shopping bag in my closet.  D and I were chatting in the living room, we thought Eli was watching Paw Patrol in my bedroom, when we heard the sound of paper being torn.  We both headed to see what was going on.  Eli had just finished opening my niece's gift and as we entered the room, he turned to us and said "ta da".  We both had to laugh!  The gift has since been rewrapped and all of the gifts are now in the spare bedroom closet.