Today was my grandma’s birthday, and we had a dinner for her. My mom made potato soup, and it was really good - and that’s really saying something since I typically don’t care for it. And we also had chips and lunch meat for sandwiches. My mom made a caramel apple cake. Cakes seem to be her specialty. She likes to experiment with them. Most of the time they turn out pretty good, but there have been a few botched efforts, such as the Kool Aid cake.

After we ate and the presents were opened, my mom, Allyson and I went to Goodwill, TJ Maxx and Kohls. I found a cute shirt at TJ Maxx, and a couple of pairs of shoes at Kohls. I also went shopping yesterday and got a shirt at Maurice’s before I stopped by Sears to pick up a gift card for my grandma’s birthday.

I really need to buy some new make-up. I’ve been trying to take care of my skin, washing it at night - especially when I’ve been wearing make-up, and then moisturizing with some facial lotion. I almost bought a blackhead remover while I was at Target yesterday. I know that Clean and Clear has a product for that, but sometimes that brand dries out my skin, so I was kind of reluctant to get it. I might go to Wal-Mart tomorrow and see if I can find some other brand for the same thing, and see about buying some new foundation while I’m at it. I’ve almost spent all of my birthday money, which is just kind of depressing.

On a completely random note, I burnt my tongue eating the potato soup today and it hurts.

Whew, I’m trying to play catch up with watching Heroes. I missed out on about the last half of the second season last year because I was busy writing for NaNoWriMo. I haven’t decided if I’m going to do it again this year, but I have a feeling if I do, then I’m going to be behind on several shows pretty fast.

My mom, sister and Tori stopped by earlier. They went shopping. No surprise there. There was a show on about a couple that has sextuplets, and we were trying to fathom having that many babies all at once. It would be such a huge job. I mean, even if they had a Bob stroller with the two seats, that still wouldn’t be enough. I have seen the three seater kinds of strollers, but I think they’d still be hard to come by. I think about trying to deal with six of Tori, and there’s no way. I couldn’t deal, and she’s not even here all the time. Crazy.

Well, I’ve had a busy weekend so far. Friday I went shopping with my mom, Blaine and Cody. The boys wanted to buy some new clothes for school. They managed to blow all of their money pretty quickly. I didn’t see too much, but I did buy Tori’s gift.

My brother is a hoot. He loves to do impressions of people. He was doing them of Bart and my uncle. Crazy kid. Along the way he and Cody spotted some used Harleys for sale along the road and babbled about that. Then my brother was trying to convince my mom to buy him an Eclipse from some guy that was selling them somewhere. I really didn’t get the details. I usually just sort of shut off after a while. I think I’m getting the hang of this selective hearing thing. We dropped Blaine and Cody off to meet their girlfriends at the park, and I hung out at my mom’s house most of the day.

Tori was with Mitch, and Allyson was supposed to pick her up at his house while she was in town. She had to go straightened out some stuff with the financial aid office at school, and she was going to get her afterwards, but Mitch decided to change plans and said he’d bring her into town later. He was supposed to drop her off between four and five, and Allyson called when she didn’t hear from him, and he’d made some more plans and said it wouldn’t be until later, so, naturally, she was upset. Then he called back a couple of hours later to say he was on his way into town. It should have taken him thirty minutes to go to the house. He didn’t show up for another hour and a half. So Bart had a few words with him. I won’t get into the details, but I think Allyson and Mitch had talked through things enough to be civil and have a tentative schedule for seeing Tori.

Then today we had Tori’s birthday party out at the park. She had a strawberry cake with chocolate chips in it that my mom made for her. She seemed to enjoy opening her presents and she played in the park with Dennis’ (Allyson’s new boyfriend) niece.

Tomorrow I have the last of the family reunions to attend. I’m anticipating a lot of food and a lot of people, as there is every year.

I went to a family reunion on Sunday, and the highlight of the event was watching Allyson and Trey basically beat the crap out of each other. It was ridiculous and childish, yet hilarious none the less. My sister managed to knee herself in the eye while Trey had her in a headlock and wound up giving herself a black eye. Definitely laugh worthy if you ask me. I kept telling Allyson to be careful. Trey is about as accident prone as Bella Swan. Of course, his mom rushes him to the ER for the smallest of things. It’s beyond me how they can afford to make a weekly visit to the emergency room and still manage to sail off into the sunset on Caribbean cruises just about every year. What do I know, though?

My brother cut his hair, which is just bizarre now. I didn’t even recognize him at first on Sunday because so used to his long ‘do. It looks better though. You can at least tell he has eyes now, which is always nice.

I’ve been busy this week working on a label. I’m just about finished with it. I have a few things left to do, but I needed to take a break from looking at it to regather my thoughts. I really had when that happens. It’s like I have all of the pieces there, but when it comes down the last part, I can’t seem to fit them together. Usually taking a break helps, so, hopefully, I’ll finish it either tonight before I go to bed or tomorrow after I wake up. Oddly enough, I woke up this morning with the logo design in my head. I wound up deviating from what I have in mind, but I think this worked out better. I guess I won’t actually know until I send it off.

Tori’s birthday is in a couple of days, and I’ve yet to buy her anything. The kid has just about everything, so I’m not really sure what to get her. I mean, she’s going to be four, so she’s pretty much pleased with anything, but even so, it’s still hard to choose. I guess I’ll have to hit the store before Saturday. Allyson’s having a party for her that day at the park, so I still have a few days to think on it.

- So the night out with the girls was a blast. Amanda was late, naturally. I wouldn’t expect any less of her. If she wasn’t late, she wouldn’t be Amanda. So Shakti and I went ahead and ordered and we were eating dessert by the time Amanda arrived. We talked about what’s been going on since graduation, movies, books, boys. All that fun stuff.

- I met my sister’s new boyfriend, Dennis, yesterday. I don’t know much about him aside from the facts that he’s 25, has a younger brother and sister, and he’s tall. But he didn’t appear to be stoned, so that’s at least one step above Mitch. The jury is still out on the verdict.

- My brother pulled a muscle in his shoulder last night, and our mom had to take him to the ER. At first they thought he’d dislocated his shoulder. He was at our cousin’s house, wrestling. Boys are so ridiculous.

- I finally got to see The Dark Knight! I felt like I was the only person who hadn’t seen it for a while. It was so good. Heath Ledger was so amazing. I still can’t believe he’s gone. :(

- I actually wrote some yesterday. I have been so slack about writing, but I made myself sit down and reread the last thing I wrote and I added over a page. That’s not huge, but it’s improvement at least.

- I also talked to Taye a bit. I’ve missed her. We caught up, and I think we’re going to try our hands at a collaboration. We’re actually picking up something we started ages ago. I think it’ll be fun. I’ve missed my friend and I’ve missed writing way too much.

- So I was looking at this contraption called the Stokke Tripp Trapp. When I first looked at it, honestly, I had no idea what it was. Upon reading, it was obvious it was one of those sort of change as you grow sort of things. It reminded me of one of my all time favorite books is The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen because the main character’s dad used to always buy stuff like that. Things that are supposed to make life easier. Random, but it was just a funny thought association I had. Honestly, stuff like that is great. If you take care of it long enough to get the use out of it. With my family, that seems nearly impossible.

- 6 days until Breaking Dawn! Wee! I’m rereading Eclipse right now. Unfortunately, I think I’ll finish either tonight or tomorrow, so I don’t know what I’ll do to tide myself over until Breaking Dawn. Probably read Twilight again for the millionth time. *obsessed*