Thanksgiving: just the latest thing to not go to plan here. The plan was for us all to go to Laura & Thomas' for Thanksgiving, then visit with the Caspers on the way back. However by Tuesday night Beth started a bout with the stomach flu. We had been planning to leave Wednesday morning (I took Wednesday off) so we could be there by late afternoon, but Tuesday night it started in earnest for her and by Wednesday evening she was still all torn up inside, so we cancelled. The kids were pretty disappointed, so were Beth and I, but couldn't be helped.....so anyway we tried to make sure we did something fun this weekend. On Wednesday I took the girls to FW to do some shopping, mostly for Natalie's birthday coming up (17!) She wanted to go to Hobby Lobby and the mall, so that's where we headed. We started at Fazoli's (including cheesecake for all!) , then Barnes & Noble (I found a neat 80s themed puzzle for Beth) and Nat went from there to Earth Magic, because she is on some new age kick and wanted incense. She spent a looong time picking some out, and looking over all the crystals and stuff. Missy checked out Think Geek mostly. Hobby Lobby after the mall, which we went through in slow fine detail. Nat knocked over a glass thingy which shattered, and verrrry nearly started one of those shutdown panic attacks, but after a while in a relatively quiet corner she recovered. But by the time we were done, both girls just wanted out of there and to go home, which was fine with me.....Beth was able (with Alex's help) to do a bit of shopping Wednesday for our dinner on Thursday, which consisted of a crock pot chicken and veggies with mashed potatoes, so pretty much Thanksgiving fare. Family gatherings with a big meal are Beth's favorite part of the holidays so she's pretty bummed about this one, but it's better than traveling with a stomach bug.....Later on Wednesday evening we all went out to see "Frozen 2" which everyone liked, some more than others, but I thought was very good.....Black Friday Beth and I went shopping for a new bed. We've needed one for a long time; we're still sleeping on the one Ronnie and DeeAnn gave us when we moved in to this house. We thought that furniture places wouldn't be too crowded on Black Friday, and we were right. We wanted to shop local so we started at JB's, but we didn't find anything we were really enthusiastic about so we went to Mattress Firm, and we found a nice Sealy with a free adjustable base (for Black Friday) that we both thought felt really good. So we bought it, and spent a lot more than I was planning on (It all came to around $2200) but we really need it. The bed was delivered and set up today, and we are really looking forward to sleeping on it.....Also since we had a free weekend we weren't planning on, I finished replacing all the ceiling tiles and replacing the fan in the downstairs bathroom this weekend. It looks unbelievably better and it's nice that the fan doesn't rattle any more...Saturday everyone went out to see "Knives Out" which I really liked. It's been a long time since we saw two theater movies in the same week, maybe just as long since we saw a movie that had nothing to do with Disney. Gotta love a good murder mystery, even if I kinda called it, at least as to how.