Weekending

This was a nice weekend. While I love our road trip weekends or visiting guests weekends, sometimes it's nice to have nowhere to be and nothing to do. Especially, especially when it's all of a sudden 73 degrees right smack dab in the middle of February.

On Saturday, I...

took walks. Multiple ones. In the sunshine. It was heaven.

and did some crafting....

and wrote! Sorry if I broke google reader... I was a blogging fool on Saturday. But it felt so good to catch up. I've been so all-or-nothing when it comes to blogging, but much like my cooking, lately it seems like I've got no time to do little bits here and there, so I end up sitting down and doing it all at once.

According to my GapKids batch tasking rule... I guess that's the way to do it. Although I generally try to blog to keep sort of an online diary, and it's kind of silly to be writing about something that happened 3 weeks ago. But oh well - I guess late is better than never!

Saturday night, we met friends out for dinner - Zac and Jamie, Donna and Matt, Donna's visiting Momma, and Akanksha - at Firebirds. We love Firebirds, but this was a bit of a rough visit for our crew. I tried to call ahead since we were a big group, but the phone just rang and rang and rang...so I assumed - well, no call aheads! When we get there, she asked if we had a reservation... I just groaned because I knew that meant: big ol' wait time. We jammed ourselves in around the crowded bar to settle in for the 45-60 minute wait... when much to our surprise, our buzzer went off after 15 mintues! Joy! Until I handed it to the hostess and her face just crumpled... "Oh... I buzzed the wrong buzzer." Tromp tromp tromp, back to the bar we went. After an hour, it was all I could do not to grab a loaf of their yummy soudough bread from a passing by waiter.

Have I mentioned I started back on steroids again yesterday? No, no I haven't. Insert vicious appetite here. Awesome. (More on that another day.)

FINALLY, we were seated after a little more than an hour and our group started putting in their orders. When the waitress got to Zac, he ordered what he had been thinking about all day long. The look on his face when she told him they were out of the ribs was on par to hearing the news someone had stolen his car. He asked if she was playing a joke on him, and the smile on our perky waitress' face started to waver a little bit. Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Donna - at 22 weeks pregnants - was just now learning that she too would not be having the ribs. It was a soul crushing moment for 2/8ths of our little group.

Despite the long wait and rib fiasco, Firebirds was delicious as usual and we sat there until we were the last group left and anxious glances were being tossed our way. We relocated to the bar area, where the boys watched basketball and the girls talked about jobs, coupons, stroller research, running, and dogs. We're exciting like that. But oh, how I love my Winston friends.

Sunday!

Sunday, I...

... watched Buddy roll around in the yard like a wackadoodle, before taking him on another real walk. I'll be the first to admit our walks have suffered this winter, and he's happy as a pig in slop to be doing the full loop in our neighborhood again.

The DeacDoc asks that you excuse his lawn.

... clipped coupons and perused the aisles of Harris Teeter on "Super Doubles Day!" I don't do the coupon thing too much, but thanks to Jamie and Donna telling me about the SouthernSavers website, I do find myself a little more excited to hunt out the good deals. Although I try to make it a rule not to clip a coupon for something I wouldn't buy regularly, sometimes it's hard not to get caught up in the savings excitement. To see the cash register start off at one amount, and then quickly fall as they swipe your coupons - bee bop, bee bop, bee bop - it's probably as close as I'll get to experiencing something like a slot machine win.

My winnings today? All this loot (plus 2 racks of ribs) for $41, with $50.06 in coupons/store savings. In the light of complete transparency, I spent a kabillion dollars at the grocery store last week for my cook-a-thon so I didn't need much this week. There's not much here to make dinner out of - although they did have both wild caught salmon and flounder on sale - so obviously I'd have had to have made a few more purchases under normal circumstances.

But did you catch that? $50 in savings! Sometimes I wish you had to hand them the regular amount of money, and then they could hand you back the savings. Just because it doesn't really feel REAL... just them telling you how much you saved.

... then I made some ribs, because I think we needed a chicken break. The ribs I make - they are my Dad's famous recipe. They slow cook in the oven for nearly 3 hours til they are fall off the bone tedner. (Yes, I am guessing that the spark for those was lit last night at Firebirds.) While they cooked, I cleaned up the kitchen and pulled together all the random photos, phone pics, vids and tweets from this weekend to capture it into this here blog.

And that? That was our weekend! Just the right amount of getting things done, doing nothing, going outside and going out. And with that, I think I’m ready for the next 5 ahead of me.