Glorious Weekend

I had such a great weekend. Our holidays were so hectic that I really hadn't felt rested or relaxed in a long time, even though with the holidays came a few days off work. Friday night was still a little crazy – I'd made a lasagna the night before for brand new parents in my Sunday School class, and we'd invited a college friend over to watch football and hang out. So I get off work, go straight home, get the lasagna, and drive into Prattvegas to deliver it. This would normally be no more than a 15 minute drive, but at rush hour Prattvegas becomes the 7th circle of hell. And then I discover that I'd been given the wrong address. So, my lasagna was a little late, and I didn't get back to my house to start getting dinner ready for Z and our guest until about 7:00. Anyway, that visit was very nice, even though I fell asleep during the football game.

Saturday morning we didn't sleep in too much (sleeping past 8:00 makes me feel like a bum), but we woke up slowly which is more important. I got a lot of great books for Christmas, so I read Saturday morning, and we spent a lot of time in the yard (it was strangely warm) measuring for our fence and digging up someone's long-forgotten pole which had been cemented into a bucket and the whole shebang buried. I'm not sure what it was used for, but we dug it up and generally just cleaned up the yard. The neighbors seem to view our side of their fence as a dumping ground of little items. It's like they think if we can't see it from our house it isn't littering. So I go outside and pick up Big Mac boxes, gum wrappers, etc. Also, this weekend I found a few butter knives, two pieces of pipe, and a pair of scissors. All in one corner of our yard… This is weird because nobody has lived on our property. The house was just built last summer, and it was a wooded lot before that. It makes me think that Damien threw them (at us? at animals?) or something. I don't know what to think about all that.

Saturday afternoon a storm blew in and we sat on the porch watching it rain and just enjoyed nature. Since both us were raised in the country, this is natural to us. The apartments were definitely not natural. People shouldn't be shut up like that.

Anyway, Sunday we went to church as normal, then went home to get ready for my mom, step dad, and brother's visit. They hadn't seen our house since about a week before we moved in, so we had them over for lunch. The menu was parmesan oven-fried chicken, fresh green beans, cinnamon apples, mashed potatoes, sour cream muffins, and key lime pie for dessert (my mother made that). I only have two hands, and this took a lot of prep. (The chicken alone had 30 minutes prep and an hour cook time.) So when my mother arrived she helped me get lunch ready. It's been a long time since my mother and I cooked together, so that was lots of fun. The meal was a big hit too, even though it was almost 2:00 before we ate.

They stayed for a few hours and hung out with us on the porch, admiring our new house (it does look quite different from the last time they saw it), and just visiting. After they left around 5:00, Z and I went to Books-a-Million to return several duplicated books I'd gotten for Christmas and get a couple of new ones with our store credit. Then we went home for a quiet evening of reading. How very quaint. It was a splendid weekend, all around, and I hated to ruin it by coming to work this morning.

P.S. At nighttime we always set the security system for the doors and windows, but never the motion detectors, because of course we're still in the house. Last night Z was either playing a practical joke or being forgetful, I'm not sure, but around 12:30 a.m. when I got out of bed to get a glass of water, I walked through the living room and the alarm started shrieking at me. It took us a while to get back to sleep after that little episode.