DH is on Vacation for TWO WEEKS

But, it's gone suprisingly well. One week down, one week to go. Of course, nothing has gotten done around the house - not my regular work or any of the long laundry list of chores I had hoped to get done. Time to hire a handy man!

Last week was the Walmart Shareholders meeting. Wendesday night we went to the big free concert and saw Carrie Underwood and Rascal Flatts. Thursday and Friday we went to the big Vendor Fair and brought home tons of free stuff. They wer handing out free clear backpacks and then you walked around and filled them up with freebies. usually they give out a lot of trial size items, but this year we got a lot of full sized items like 3 36 oz. bottles of Softsoap Body Wash, full size Colgate Toothpase, 24 (yes, 24!) full size Speed Stick Deodorants and countless other things. We ended up with nine back packs and six of them were full of freebies. We were there when they were closing down and they got really generous getting rid of the last of the loot. The Colgate people handed me six bags of stuff at once. The Little Debbie guy gave DS a life size standee of Ken Schrader -the racecar driver. The Keebler guy knew DH so he handed us a Playstation game under the counter that he only had a few of for certain people.

My favorite yearly yard sale was this weekend. These people live in KS, but travel back here several times a year to have a huge sale. They go to a lot of auctions and sell on ebay and sell the rest of the sstuff at this sale. They have so much and they price things at 25¢ to 50¢. They usually have about 20 boxes of stuff priced at $1.00 a box. Mix and mathc or a whole box for $1.00. I always pick through and make up a box or tow but someday I will have a truck and just buy all twenty boxes and sort it at home! (Oh, the crazy dreams I have!) I bought one box of material for $1.00 for some old ticking on top. Underneath the ticking I found a bunch of old tablecloths, napkins, table runners, sun bonnets, handmade potholders, etc. A good deal at $1.00. I got a clump of lucite grapes for $2.00. That buy will pay for everything else I bought that day.

We did break down and buy DS a Playstation 2. He's never had a video game system, so this is all new to us. PS2 seemed like the practical choice because the games are easier to store and you can readily rent them. We bought him one game and the Keebler guy gave him another one. I ordered two on Amazon today for $5.29 with free shipping. So, he will have four games to keep him busy for awhile.