a sweet visit and more

two weekends ago lb and lizzie came down for the weekend to help celebrate my birthday! it was super fun (can't you tell...)

no it really was. we got to just hang out and talk, take a walk, eat some really, really yummy food and just play.
seriously i had no idea it would be so good. this place certainly isn't unfamiliar to me still, but for whatever reason these two girls are so familiar to me that it's just comfortable being able to be with them. i'm not explaining that well, but it was so nice. and so fun. and our first overnight guests, which was neat.
plus, we took this picture and i have no idea how it happened. crazy. in other news we're a little swamped here at the monroe household. we're going out of town for essentially all of next week — with a staff retreat and then thanksgiving. and then tomorrow and saturday 8 middle and high school girls are sleeping here and we're going to a conference in town. so there's wrapping up work before all that for me, cleaning to prepare for the girls, presents, which we exchange at thanksgiving and which i'm making all of (which i really like, don't let me make you think it's a burden...it's just time consuming), plus packing and planning and all.

and of course getting ready for the c-word. if you know daniel well (or possibly at all) you probably know that he's obsessed with christmas. it's a big time for us. but we're not allowed to mention it before thanksgiving, so we're waiting in excitement and anticipation...

oh! and guess what just happened?!?! so we have a credit card that earns us points for flying, right? super smart because as it turns out you fly a lot when you live on the other side of the country from your family. well, our card has been pretty lame. there aren't blackout dates or anything, but it's been way slower than we had expected. and then we have friends here who have the same card but talk about having enough points for several flights and we've been pretty confused. but then yesterday daniel probed and found out that if we just have the card with an annual fee we get like 12 billion more benefits. it's a $75 fee, and the benefits will allow us easily double the number of flights we get, plus all sorts of other stuff we haven't been getting! it's crazy! including the fact that if you buy one ticket within the U.S. over $299 and pay for it with the card, you get one ticket for the same flight free! WHAT?! yeah. that's huge for us. um, we're flying twice in the next four weeks and both of those flights would have qualified for this. grrr.... but at least we have it now. so, if you're in the market email us and we'll let you know about it !