Outside My Window: The sun is starting to set which is super depressing because it’s only 5pm. It’s been a weird November with some mornings that feel like you expect November to feel – super chilly, grab the winter coat and give yourself five extra minutes to scrape the windshield. But we also still have days where I find myself outside in a short sleeve t-shirt and I remain unwilling to part with my sandals. I have like every sweater and jacket and tank top in rotation still and it’s confusing.

I Am Thinking: That I should probably tell MM to get ready for karate but there are no grown ups around to tell me to stop goofing off online and be responsible. Oh wait, I’m the grown up, aren’t I? Darn.

I’m Reading: The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo because Macklemore keeps telling me to. I’m counting it as the book I should have read in high school for Modern Mrs. Darcy’s 2015 reading challenge. That leaves me with just two more categories to finish. A book written in another language (which this book could qualify for also) and a book recommended by my mother. I have both books picked out, I just need to actually read them.

I Just Watched: the latest episode of Top Model and I’m still in disbelief that the show was cancelled. What am I going to do next season without mocking a handful of teenagers on their ability or inability to smize and find their light when my six year old excels at these things like it’s her job. Seriously, it’s the end of an era.

I Am Hearing: my daughter complain to me about which jacket she wants to wear at karate because I totally win at mothering right now. I’ll finish this later after karate because clearly she is incapable of dressing appropriately without intervention. Til then…

::ahem:: I’m back nearly 24 hours later. Let’s wrap this up, shall we?

Weekend Wrap Up: Saturday we had a whirlwind day trip of sorts. We drove to IKEA in the next state over where we had lunch and went shopping with friends who drove out with us. We finally bought ourselves a new bedroom set – a new beautiful dresser with matching nightstands and a new bookshelf for my overflowing pile of books which looked like this up until Sunday:

I’ll post an after picture soon but suffice it to say, all of my books actually fit on the new bookshelf with a little bit of room to grow – yay for not having to get rid of books yet!

We also decided to finally buy BB her own dresser that’s like actually big enough to hold all of her clothes and will even be in her bedroom and everything like she’s a normal child capable of not emptying the contents of her dresser onto her floor everyday. We shall see if that’s true or not!

After IKEA we went to the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament where we ate like kings (from the medieval times at least) and watched jousting competitions, sword fighting, a falconer falconing and more. It was pretty spectacular and everyone had an absolute blast. We’re all pretty stoked because the knight whose section we were seated in and thus cheering for ended up winning the whole tournament handily. It felt like a sort of rigged operation in that he was quite clearly a more advanced horseback rider and fighter than most of the other knights but maybe we were just biased.

This was both Dan’s early birthday present and his reward for surviving a trip to IKEA with me and the kids. No easy feat.

Plans For The Week: I’m going to see Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet tonight with a good friend and tomorrow Dan and I are going to see Craig Ferguson performing live at our local performing arts center place dealio. So this is kind of an outrageously exciting week just for those two events alone. On Friday I’m chaperoning MM’s class field trip to the Lutheran High School which he is somewhat dorkishly excited about so that should be fun, too.

Picture Thoughts: 

Visiting the torture chamber. You can almost see the metal mask / helmets behind BB that apparently people in medieval times used as a punishment for women who talked too much, or rather were too outspoken against authority figures or men or whatever. So we’ve come a long way, really.

BB and I taking selfies before the tournament started.

Cheesy group photo!