lonnnng weekend

I mean, for realz long. FOUR DAYS long. That's my kind of weekend, folks. Plus, it means that this next week is better than usual, too-- three days of work followed by three days of weekend (I don't work Fridays, remember?)...so it makes for two great [short] weeks! Yay!

Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures. I have pics from Friday and today, but sadly the camera battery died on the Fourth...doesn't that just figure? Oh well. So we'll start with things that have pictures.

Friday night we went to an outdoor concert in a nearby small town, Monroe. Abbey Road Live was playing-- they're a Beatles cover band, so it was pretty fun. Luckily it was a nice cool evening and we had a good spot to plop our picnic blanket and lawn chairs...so it was a lot of fun!

Check out those sweet Beatles-esque suits. Classy, huh?

There were actually several much cuter pics of the two of us...but in all but this one I had a BIG HUNK OF BLACKBERRY (read: huge black THING) stuck in between my teeth. Mortifying. Thanks a lot for watching my back, Mattie. (Or my teeth, as the case may be)

The weekend went extremely well, meal-wise. Saturday morning we started with my all-time fave Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes. I've made these (from Pioneer Woman's cookbook) maybe five times now? And every time I do, I convince myself more that no other pancake will ever satisfy me. Trust me, do yourself a favor and make them. And then invite me over to eat them with you. Better double the recipe, come to think of it....

Saturday night I tried a new recipe, which was a smashing home run. So much so that as we were finishing up dinner, Matt asked when we could have them again. And then he asked for them for lunch on Sunday. And then dinner. And then he's mentioned them several times since. So um...I think it went over well. Check out the Poor Man's Crab Cakes which involve no actual crab, only zucchini. Which happens to be dirt cheap. Which only adds to the appeal of these tasty pseudo-crab cakes. Anyway, they're awesome. If you're planning on making them, I'd mention a few things I did differently(as a result of reading a few other recipes and comments on recipes), so let me know if you want a few tips. Sadly, I have no pictures of the ones I made. They were gone too quickly.

This morning I wasn't feeling well, so as I lounged and moaned and watched even MORE episodes of House Hunters in the living room, Matt took it upon himself to bake PW's French Breakfast Puffs. We're talking about from-scratch pastries here, kids. By MATT! With NO assistance or urging from me! They were totally awesome, and also TOTALLY healthy, I'm sure. But I can't be too sure, since I didn't help make them. So actually I think they were pretty nutritious. They ought to have been, since we didn't eat them ("breakfast") til almost 1pm. Ha.


There was more awesome food at our Fourth of July extravaganza, but I have no pictures of that, sadly. The only other thing I have photo evidence of from this weekend is the time we spent working on refinishing our china cabinet! I got Mattie a power orbital sander for his anniversary gift (that was a totally not selfish present, right??). You'll notice who is the person actually USING the sander.



Well...some stuff still has to be sanded by hand. And I'm just so weak and frail, I could simply nevah handle all that super exhausting hand-sanding, right?? Right. :) I'll play my "girl card" when it suits me, thanks. Anyway, things are coming along just swimmingly. I estimate this project will be completed around Christmas. Ha. Maybe. Here you can see one of the sanded upper doors (we took the glass out, obviously) compared to its non-sanded mate. Nice, huh?? We'll be staining them a very dark espresso color to (hopefully) match our other dining room furniture.

On the Fourth we enjoyed spending time with lots of our friends (and their accompanying children/dogs) at the Van Pelt's house. The boys constructed the World's Largest (or at least the East Side's Largest) slip-n-slide. It involved tarps, sprinklers, pool floats...and lots of crashing into trees and bushes. I, being of sound mind and body, chose to cheer from the side lines. I think that going through the physical and emotional trauma of major knee surgery and rehabilitation once is enough for my lifetime, thanks.

While the boys and kids acted like crazy people on the slip-n-slide (and two kiddie pools) I helped hold babies and eat food. Those are things MUCH more up my alley. I also had some interesting conversations with kids, such as when I was with two 5(ish) year old girls on the back porch at night. A frog was hopping in the bushes and one girl caught it. It kept jumping out of her hand and she kept picking it back up and making her friend scream (friend wasn't so impressed by the frog). After like 5 minutes of thinking she had probably killed the poor frog, I convinced her to put it back down and let it "go home". Before she did, she said "but can I kiss him first?" And I said "NO!" And she said "but why?"...and I really couldn't think of any good reasons...I think the thing about getting warts is an old wives tale...so I said "well, I guess you can." And so she did. Three times. And she seemed rather sad that the thing just kept on being a frog and not turning into a prince. So she let him go. And then I told her mom, who was properly horrified and amused that her beautiful child was outside kissing frogs under my supervision. Hahaha. It was great.

So all in all, a great weekend. And now it's only a few days until the NEXT weekend starts-- yay!!