Monday: Finally... A Weekend At Home

With all our recent weddings and weekend trips, it was so nice to be in Gainesville this weekend.

Friday: We busted out our electric fryer for the first time (it was a wedding gift we received 3 years ago) and celebrated our friend, Chris' birthday by frying some fish. We also turned our kitchen into a fry factory and acquired a blister or two (ok, I'm exaggerating), cutting pounds of potatoes -both white and sweet- to fry. Some of the guys slip & slid (is that the past tense for slip & slide?) and we discovered that Carver doesn't like the Happy Birthday song. Either that or he was over-tired and intimidated by the crowd.

That night I got 8 straight hours of sleep!!! The old me would not be so excited to wake up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning, but after going to bed at 10:30 on Friday night, the momma me was thrilled to look at the clock and realize I had an uninterrupted night's sleep!

Saturday: I put the finishing touches on my summer cleaning frenzy by attempting to sell all our stuff that wasn't Craigslist material at a garage sale. We combined forces with the Rohans, Putnams and Dourtes. I would say they were a little more successful than us, in that we made only enough money to pay for our Cuban pastry breakfast. However, it was an overall great time and now my closet is only filled with overflow storage that we actually want.

Saturday night we went out for Megan's birthday dinner. Happy birthday, friend! Carver stole a little bit of the attention with his blueberry mustache.

Sunday: I freaking love our church. Even though I missed most of the sermon, trying to get Carver to sleep, I always feel like I'm in God's presence when I'm there. After church, we came home and had a relaxing lunch while Carver napped for over 2 hours! Ethan went to help the Putnams move into their new apartment while I took a look at our budget to prepare for Financial Peace University. This led me to call Verizon to see how they might be able to lower our monthly bill. Hey, its worth a try, right? Right! All I said was that we would like to pay less and the customer service guy offered us the "loyalty plan" that still provides well over the average number minutes of minutes we use every month and will save us about $20. Its not going to cover Carver's college tuition, but, hey it was worth the 15 minutes I spent on the phone.

FPU was great. Dave Ramsey is pretty funny for a good ole' boy and really got us excited about saving money! The first "baby step" is saving $1000 toward an emergency fund. After we picked Carver up from Natalie & Dan's, we all headed to Sweet Dreams for wild flavor night. My favorite was peanut butter with chocolate covered potato chips. Thanks for the ice cream, Putnams!

I'm looking forward to a mostly un-eventful week. Hope you have a great one, too!

MInute Monday: Busy Wedding Weekend

Friday: A runny nose caused Carver and I to skip play group (bummer!). When he woke me up for a 5:30 AM feeding, I was half-asleep on the glider, convinced he had swine flu. A cup of coffee and call to the doctor's office settled my mind. The nurse suggested I give him a few days and some saline spray to help him breathe. He seems to be just as content as always, just noisier as he nurses. After the most boring Friday I've had in a while, I gladly welcomed Ethan home and we adorned our cow costumes. A torrential downpour might have washed away some of our spots but didn't dampen our excitement for free Chick-Fil-A. I love that they have Dr. Pepper. I love that the employees always say "my pleasure" and were walking families out to their cars with umbrellas. I love that they gave Carver a free kids meal even though he has no teeth and the only cow-like thing he was wearing were his cute new black & white converse hi-tops.

Saturday: Ethan's on a new campaign to finish his thesis (praise the Lord!), so he woke up at 7:00 and worked on that. I slowly got up and got everyone packed, fed and headed out to Orlando with Kari. We met some friends for lunch in Winter Park, dropped Carver off with Ethan's mom and got ready for the wedding. The Greek Orthodox ceremony was really neat. I was a little off when I said there would be no words, however, there were no vows and most of what the priest said (sung) was in Greek. It was great to see some old friends and learn some new dances. Somehow, I ended up holding hands with the father of the bride during a circular Greek dance. "9 steps forward, 3 steps back...its that easy," the DJ said. Now, I know my college days are behind me, but I was counting and I'm pretty sure there was more to it than that.

Sunday: We drove to Merritt Island after the wedding and went out to breakfast with Ethan's parents the next morning. The last time Kari, Ethan and I were in Merritt Island together was the first time I met Ethan's parents and the first time I knew Ethan was interested in me. We had just gone down to the beach for the day and when we stopped by his house, his parents told me how much they had heard about me. Six years later and we're back with their grandson! That evening we started Financial Peace University at our church. I'm excited to do this study because (as you know) I love saving money and because it will be 2 hours of grown-up time every week for Ethan and me.

Now I'm home, looking at an overflowing laundry basket and an empty fridge thinking how does this happen so quickly?