The 8pm Shutdown – An update

The 8pm Shutdown rule hasn’t exactly been wildly successful this week, but it’s not been a complete failure either.

On Sunday night, I had a Life Night after 5:30pm mass, so after mass I didn’t get home until around 9:30pm, after which I promptly walked past my messy kitchen and house and crashed into bed (Michael, Chris and Jenay had something of an unexpected event happen on Sunday after mass in which they helped a good friend of our with an emergency ER visit for her little boy. Hence the reason why the house was a mess).

On Monday night, Michael and I had our monthly budgeting date. Actually, maybe “date” isn’t the best term for our monthly meetings. They’re usually not the least bit romantic, unless we happen to agree on how to spend/save every single dollar from that month’s budget in five minutes and then we go out for milkshakes afterwards, rent a movie we’ve been waiting on to come out and go home and snuggle on the couch in front of a fire. Actually that’s never happened, but I’m hoping it will one day 🙂

Anyway:), our “date” this month took much longer than expected and encroached far into the 8pm Shutdown. But, that’s the beauty of keeping flexibility in your life: you don’t get bent out of shape if things don’t happen when you want them to!

Tonight (Tuesday), I had a meeting at 7pm for the Life Teen girls’ retreat I’m staffing later this month. We will have about 20 girls on the retreat and will spend the weekend at a beach house about an hour away. It’s the closest thing to a girls’ weekend I’ve have in I-Can’t-Remember-How-Long, so I’m pretty excited! Plus, the retreat is based around some of the ideas from a wonderful book I read in college, Captivating.

So, as you can see I haven’t exactly been able to be consistent enough with the 8pm Shutdown to be able to gush about all its wonderful blessings yet, but I’m confident that I will be able to one day soon!

In other news, Michael, me, Gabriel, Chris and Jenay went to the Houston Zoo this afternoon to take advantage of First Tuesdays free admission. We had a GREAT time! AND we got really, really cold! It was a beautiful, sunshine-filled afternoon, but it was in the 30’s the entire time we were there. Gabriel was a trooper and loved everything, of course, as did all of us “adults” who enjoyed getting out of the house and the office (or the home office, in my case).

Michael and Chris took advantage of the fact that we were one of only about 50 visitors in the whole zoo this afternoon because it was so cold today, and the two of them entertained themselves with “ka-pow!” sounds every time they saw something with hooves. Or a turkey hoot when we saw the turkeys…you get the picture :). Gabriel loved it though, I have to say. He grinned the entire time! Here are a couple of pictures!

Gabriel is keeping his eye on that hungry female lion!!! Hahaha 🙂

Our proper family portrait in front of the same lion, who has her eye on another visitor in this photo. Between the two of us, Michael and I only have two green, left-handed, men’s course cotton work gloves with factory numbers on the back of them. We took turns wearing them around the zoo yesterday. Gratefully. I swear I used to have some beautiful ivory leather and suede winter gloves, but they grew legs and walked off sometime between high school and today. I think I need to hit up some winter clearance sales. Maybe before the temperatures in Houston climb out of the 30’s!

Good night wonderful readers. Blessings and peace be on you!