Success

Finally! Finally finally finally.
Today (Jason's day off and the day that I get nothing done around the house. . . ever) we finished the last circuit. . . Do they all work. . .well, sort of.
Why? Ha, it's funny you should ask. See the guy why built this place had never heard of logic or planning. Apparently to him it seemed like a good idea to run single wires to every light switch instead of running a complete set of wires.
The effect of this decision is that we can't find the return wires for any of the lights.
Possible solutions include ripping up all of the ceilings, or running wires along the outside which will look absolutely atrocious, or praying with every ounce of faith that we possess and hoping that some of the exposed wires we found (but didn't know where they went to) turn out to contain return paths for the lights.
Any better ideas would be welcome.
We now have three working lights not including any of the bedrooms or the bathroom. Ah I love life.

Also this week on The Flanneries:
Alisabeth started earning money this week by doing chores and helping mommy around the house. Why? She saw an umbrella and simply had to have it. She already understands the concept of buying things and usually tries to hand things to any uniformed person and then turn to me and say "I wanna buy that." So we took it a step further and told her she would be able to buy it herself if she earned money. We explained how she could do that and then we made a big deal of putting whatever change we could find into a little piggy bank (already 1/3 full) and marking a spot about half an inch above the money already in there. Toward the end I started stuffing bills in there because they take more room.
It took her two weeks to get to the line but as soon as she got there she got such a giddy look of excited anticipation on her face that I could do nothing but smile and love her to pieces.
I didn't get to go with her to pick it out, but Jason said she was quite decisive. She chose a purple parasol. It's very cute and so far it's done everything except sleep with her. . . if only we had some rain. :)

We also took a trip up to Phoenix on Wednesday to see the lights at the temple. Every year they set up a huge light display which contains most of the scenes from Luke about the Savior's birth. There are three giant camels and wise men on the front lawn, sheppards in the fields on one section of grass. An ancient prophet writing about His birth and a bunch of other scenes. It was very cool.
Alisabeth totally understands that we're celebrating Jesus's birthday this month. She's amazing.
Tonight's Family Home Evening lesson was about his second coming (I modified my sunday school lesson to fit since we didn't have time to do anything but circuits today). She was actually engaged the whole time. We talked about how she is sad when daddy is at work, but excited when he comes home. This is what it will be like when Jesus comes back. We will be excited because He will tell us that He loves us. She even parroted it back at the end. "I will be sad because Jesus is at work, but when he comes home we will be happy because he says he loves us!"

In my life there's not much new, I've packed up all the books, and all my sewing stuff. The only thing I have left to do is a ribbon on a gift for a second cousin-in-law, and then that will be packed away too. I even packed my motivator movies by accident. All I have left are Disney. . .
The one cool thing is my story, but even that is sort of pushed into the background by everything else we have going on. I have to really be able to concentrate to write well, otherwise it's disjointed and wrong.
I did, however, somehow manage to get Best Buy employees into a lot of trouble. I guess they've changed store policy since I worked there. Saving boxes for people is not longer allowed. I got two loads from them, but when I called back for more I was informed that district had called to tell them they were no longer allowed to give them out due to liability issues. I felt bad. Hope they didn't get into too much trouble. . .
Now I don't know where to get more from though, so it's a dilemma.

Jason hasn't done anything spectacular either this week. He did complete an entire circuit today though while I finished another one. I came around the corner into the bedroom at one point to see two shoes sticking out of the hole in the wall that leads to the crawl space. He's amazing.

Nothing super exciting happening here. Just waiting for Christmas and New Years. We've set the moving date for the 5th of January, though it may shift forward or backward depending on weather as the time draws near. Hopefully that will be plenty of time to finish this house and get through the holidays. . .
We'll also be throwing a surprise party for Jason before we leave, but don't tell him that.
It'll probably be on the 4th or 3rd before we leave, and it will probably be in an undisclosed location that I haven't set yet.
For more information you'll have to wait because I don't have any. Although brownies instead of cake does sound better.