Best. Day. Ever!

I took Thursday off work planning to do something fun with my family.  The plan was lunch and a movie.  Little did I know how the day would turn out.

First things first, I'm taking a day off to play with my family, so we are already off to good start.

I opened the day with cleaning all the lovely snow off our sidewalks and driveway.  Then I had to practically break into our truck because of all the wet snow from yesterday that had oozed into the doors and frozen.  (One door still won't open. Hoping it will next time it warms up a bit.)  I decided to take the truck around the block to warm it up a bit and figured I'd go check the church walks since we still have snow duty this week.  Of course, our Elder's Quorum president (who has the week off) is there shoveling away.  I can't just leave him there by himself so I park the truck and start shoveling with him.  I quickly realize the east side of the church is drowning in drifting snow so I head out back to get the snow blower because I can't stand shoveling deep, heavy snow.  It's one of those good sized ones with the big auger and six forward speeds. 

Needless to say it turned into more fun than work at that point, and I only got dusted in the face by the snow spray a couple of times.  Hehe.  Not bad for my first time really using the beast.  What I didn't realize until we were almost done is that my dear wife had kind of been freaking out at some point because she realized I had left and she didn't know where I was and I wasn't answering my phone (repeatedly, apparently) because I hadn't heard or felt it while chugging around with the snow blower.  Of course I hadn't told her I was leaving because she was in the garage running on her treadmill, I wasn't going to traipse through the house all snowy and besides, I was only going around the block to warm the truck up a little.  I hadn't planned on stopping at the church, just driving by to see what the damage was.

And that was how the morning ended.

After getting showered and ready, we loaded into the car and headed to lunch for some haute cuisine at one of the kids favorite joints, the local Arby's. You can almost smell the curly fries from here.  Sniiffff.  Since we were at the shopping center we ran a couple of quick errands, which included picking up some more discounted Christmas M&M's of which you can never have enough at our house.

Finally, we were off to the movie.  We arrived at a perfect time to get settled in and not have to watch too many of the monotonous pre-ads, but still get things taken care of and get ready for the show.  We had decided to take the kids to see Tangled.

Wow, that turned out to be a lot of fun!  The story was fun and the graphics were crisp and clear.  We all enjoyed the movie a lot.  Digital theatres are the only way to go.

That was the end of the afternoon and the extent of our plans for the day.  But wait, that's not all.  This day wasn't done with us yet!

Arriving home found us ready to figure out dinner, but with no particular plans.  Yvonne decided to make a big pot of vegetable soup for her and after some hemming and hawing, I decided I felt like some Bourbon Chicken.  This is a bit like a sweet and sour chicken, but even better.

It turned out something like this, only mine was darker and richer looking.  I also only used half the chicken and made the full amount of sauce 'cause I like my with lots of sauce for the rice and we didn't need two pounds of chicken.  Talk about hitting the spot. Our son really enjoyed it, which was an added bonus.

So, once again our bellies were full and spirits continued to run high.  Now, what to do with our evening..., oh yeah, what else?  It's time to enjoy some Lego Rock Band!  Yeah, Santa!

And with the completion of several music sets while on tour, it was finally time to ready the kiddos for bedtime.  Enter the bedtime ritual. 

After which Yvonne curled up with her latest book, I plopped down for some more Final Fantasy XIII play time and in the words of Rapunzel, it was the...

Best. Day. Ever!!!