Winter Wonderland

SNOW! We woke up this morning to a glorious, beautiful blanket of snow. The girls all bundled up to get out and play in it before it melts away...

We have some serious Christmas spirit going on with snow on the ground the weekend after Thanksgiving and my Christmas cactus about to bloom. I love this thing! I just received it as a gift last year, and I am absolutely amazed at how it knows when Christmas is coming. Last year at Christmas time it was blooming beautifully, and now after a whole year of waiting with nothing but green cactus to look at (although it's a nice green cactus), now, it is filled with red buds again. It's quite symbolic, really, like a year-long advent calendar. Anyway, it makes me happy!

And now for the rest of my exciting news... Greg finished our beautiful bed!! Yesterday, a good friend from church came to spend the day with the girls, so Greg and I could have a day together. We took the truck down to Wichita to go...

MATTRESS SHOPPING.

I truly really hate mattress shopping, but when you need a mattress, well, you have to go mattress shopping. The mattress salespeople know this, so they don't care that they are actually more obnoxious than used car salesmen, because if you do indeed need a mattress, you'll be coming.

Our mattress salesman was an incredibly friendly fellow named Troy. Troy was so friendly that he followed us all around the furniture store, really. I think Troy wanted to play tag or something, because Greg and I kept trying to run away from Troy, and Troy kept chasing us so that he could be really friendly. We had things to discuss that we didn't necessarily want Troy to overhear, because Troy had exceptional hearing and had lots of strong opinions and not much concern for whether anyone was actually talking to him.

Greg and I ran away to the living room section and sat down on a couch and chair to try to have a secret meeting. In a few minutes, there was Troy to see if we were okay, he didn't want us to feel neglected. "O, neglected is NOT what we feel," Greg told him. Then Toy sat down in our little living room with us. He leaned back in the chair and made himself comfortable, I think he really thought he was invited.

"This is a nice set, isn't it. We can..." Both of us started to snap.

"We're just sitting here, actually; trying to discuss our mattress decision. You see, Troy, we have stuff, too much stuff. I'm trying to clear out our storage room, and right now we don't just want more stuff. We need a mattress, and as for this deal you're offering of $100 in furniture when we make a $499 purchase, we've looked all around, and there's nothing here we want. Could you just take that $100 off our mattress purchase?" I knew the answer; I already heard Troy tell someone else that was not possible.

The idea, see is to make you spend much more than 100 extra dollars in other furniture purchases, because VERY little in that place cost $100 or less. We almost fell for it; we looked all around thinking about how maybe we should have a cushier chair in the living room, and with $100 off, that chair would only be $299. The problem is we weren't feeling the need for a chair before we got in there, and we certainly hadn't budgeted for one. They were forcing an impulse buy, and it made me mad.

I looked right at Troy when I said those things. Then Troy looked down and was quiet for a long moment, obviously greatly struggling deep within. It was quite dramatic. "Well, what I can do is give you 10% off your mattress purchase, if you'd rather have that."

"Thanks, Troy, we'll take it."

We're quite happy with the set, and I love the new bed my talented hubby built, and the rest of our day was delightful. We went out to lunch and saw an amazing movie callled Bella. After the movie, I was so touched I had to go sit in a bathroom stall at the theater for a bit to have a good cry. For more on the movie, you'll have to visit Greg's blog - coming soon.

So far we're all living happily ever after.