It pays to organize

Yesterday I decided to organize 2 bins of papers and crap in my office, into one bin. In one bin was mostly all the oodles of owners manuals we got from all the new stuff during our house build. I was able to put all those in a file cabinet drawer and then put the rest of the papers in the other bin that still had some room in it. In going through the papers I found a Visa gift card. It was the card I received as a gift for Christmas from my boss - a year ago. I totally figured it was zero balance. I mean, I would never leave a balance on a gift card! But, I figured I should double check the balance, in case there's a few dollars left on it.  There was $50 on it! What?! I looked at the history and last Feb or March I bought a $200 Amazon gift card with it. I remember using it towards my plumbing fixtures I bought through Amazon (which came to more than $200) but why I just didn't do the whole $250? I'm thinking that for some reason I thought this was only a $200 gift card. Either that or it was such a busy time, with all the house build going on (and DH's dad dying) that I spaced out and forgot about the $50 left on there (which is probably why the card wasn't thrown away). It was a win win. I got my office a bit more organized and earned 50 bucks :)

The wind is blowing like crazy this morning. Small tree branches blowing off and hitting the house. Crazy. Last night DD (400 miles away to the direct west) said they were having a big windstorm. I guess we have it now.

I only had to work a half day yesterday, so tidied up the house, as our friends (neighbors from when we lived in town) were coming over to go out to dinner. They hadn't seen our house since it got done. They drove, we bought dinner. This is the guy that works in Alaska. His current job is 3 weeks up there and 3 weeks home, but he's seriously considering taking a job closer to home. His wife is used to being on her own most of the time so she's not too thrilled, LOL. Our dogs were happy to see our friends. Our black dogs really loves the Mrs. and wouldn't leave her side the whole tour of the house, haha.

I'm so glad it's the weekend. I need some relaxing time. I'm going to make a "taco soup" for dinner. It's basically just about every type of bean there is, hamburger, tomato sauce and rotel and taco seasoning. I serve with shredded cheese, sour cream and Frito scoops. Plus it makes a ton, so I can freeze about 2 more dinners out of it.

I also bought some yeast to make homemade soft pretzels, so I think I'll try making those today, too.

And figure out what to spend the $50 gift card on.