Planning!

I am a planner - love it!  I love nothing more than getting my brand new calendar for the year (or in the case of the one that I keep in my purse the school year) and filling it out with birthdays and other yearly events and then anything else I know already that is coming up ahead.  It is silly and I'm sure other people dread it, but I am a planner and I'm proud of it!  ;)  So lately, I've been trying to plan ahead for some upcoming events. 

One of these is my son's 4th birthday.  Saying four just seems so very old - I can hardly believe that my little baby boy is going to four this year!  But he is and there needs to be a party and this is the first year that I feel like we can't do the lame adult party at our house for him and that he needs to have some friends from school and have a "real" birthday party.  So I go about looking at all of the options in the area to have a birthday party for little kids, and now I feel like the cheapest mom there is.  Because the place where the other kids had their party (a local jumping party place) is $180-$250 for a party which just seems ridiculous to me for a four year olds birthday especially when I have no idea how many children will actually show.  We need to invite everyone in his class which is fine (11 with my son) plus 1-3 other family/friend kids.  But it is the Saturday before the local spring break so I am not sure what attendance will be like.  And to pay $200+ for 5 kids to show is ridiculous (in my opinion).  I want Cooper to have a WONDERFUL birthday party, but I also don't want to spend a fortune on something like that because I want to be able to get him gifts too!  So frustrating!

In addition, I was going to plan a friend's baby shower and another friend's wedding shower.  I think we are figuring out the wedding shower situation (she originally gave us a date 3 weeks away!), but the baby shower is a totally different story altogether.  I guess I was late in asking about it because I was debating whether I wanted to be involved in hosting (just hosted 2 wedding showers for this same person not even a year ago!), so there were two other women that also offered to host.  I would make a third which would be great to help split cost and burden.  The one other woman is also one I worked with on one of the wedding showers so no problems there - the other is someone I don't really know.  I have known my friend for nearly our entire lives (25.5 years and counting), and am obviously an important person in her life.  However, the date she originally suggested is the same weekend I already booked flights to go see my grandmother (the first weekend I can really get away for a long weekend to see her when her health is failing).  So we worked on another date and then the one woman e-mails the others, leaving me off, and basically says she can do either date but she prefers the date that I am gone so maybe that is better.  Fine by me - one less thing I have to plan and although I'll be sad to miss it because she is my good friend, she and I can do something together later which will probably end up being more fun anyways.  It's just the idea of squeezing me out that makes me hot.

On top of that, I'm trying really hard to find another avenue for me to get involved in life.  I have been researching churches in the area to see if I can find a place that we would like to try out.  Now I just have to convince my hubby to take the time to do it!  It will take a few visits to a few different places, but it will be worth it if we find a good place and can meet good people from it.  I've also looked at a few graduate programs, but that seems like such a scary venture to take on since it costs so much money.  I need to figure out something though because I am not feeling 100% fulfilled in my current job and I don't see that changing any time soon.  Plus we have reviews/raises coming up soon, and I have a feeling that there will be disappointment again this year from that as well as the potential move of our office location next year so that my commute would be even farther than it is now.  These are all things that make the prospect of staying here in the same spot very scary.  Of course considering another opportunity is even scarier!  I have a feeling that 2010 is going to be a very interesting year for me as things play out in crazy ways. 

I am sure I have thoroughly bored you by now (although I don't think I have any real readers anyways so I guess it doesn't matter!), so I will end my tirade of nothing.  I wish this day would end...I'm over it!  This has been a slow week - I wish the bad weather would come in tomorrow instead of Friday because I actually have stuff going on Friday (and DATE NIGHT WOOHOO) that I would like to do whereas tomorrow is much of nothing again.  I can dream!