Weekend Recap: 2 Weekends of Birthdays, Projects, and More.

Yet again I have fallen behind in my blogging and never posted about last weekend.  Last weekend was pretty hectic.  Although Saturday during the day we were able to find some time to relax.  I was able to read some of my latest book.

While Teddy was able to catch up on some sleep.

Saturday night we headed out to Wicker park for Stacy's birthday dinner.  She picked a new place to try called People's Lounge.  It had been months since we all had hung out together, so it was great to see everyone.  Here's a picture of the group enjoying dinner.

After dinner we headed out for a few more drinks at a neighborhood bar.  It was great to catch up with everyone, and we definitely agreed that we need to see each other more often!

Sunday we finally did some of the maintenance on the wood in the front of our house.  We have wood around the front door and the window casing in front that requires an annual sanding and polyurethane coating.  It's a pretty lengthy process starting with cleaning the wood, letting it dry, sanding it, cleaning and drying again.  And then putting on two coats of the poly with about 4 hours in between.  So, it took pretty much all day.  Sunday was also Jennifer's birthday!  Happy birthday to Jennifer.  So, after finishing the project we called her up to sing happy birthday and make plans to party with her to celebrate.

Which leads us to this weekend.  This weekend was Labor Day!  Who doesn't love a long weekend?  Friday night Teddy and I headed up to Round Lake to celebrate Jennifer's birthday with her.  We met her and her friend Doug at Austin's.

Why this was the only picture we took of that night, I'm not really sure.  But we all had some good food and good drinks and good laughs to celebrate the birthday festivities.  Later on we headed back to Jennifer's place to hang out and play a few games.  It was great to spend some time with her and we were happy to be able to party with her for her birthday.

Saturday was errand day for Teddy and I.  We headed to the farmer's market in the morning (my favorite weekend activity).  We got all the fixens for a crudite plate for a BBQ with my parents, sister and her husband on Sunday.  After the farmer's market we dropped off our purchases at home and headed out to the photographer for our wedding to turn in our final order.  I cannot wait to see our final wedding album.  Hopefully we'll have it back before Thanksgiving to share with the family.  The rest of Saturday was some more shopping stops (Sam's, Jewel, etc.) and then I made some stuffed banana peppers (recipe to come in a future blog) and eggplant parmesan for dinner.

Sunday we had my parents, Sara and Michael over for a "pool party".  Well, we had hoped it'd be a pool party, but it was a little too cold.  So, we ended up spending some time catching up on the back deck.  It had been far too long since we had seen them.  Sara brought a bunch of delicious appetizers for lunch and then I made BBQ ribs and corn served along side my mom's potato salad and baked beans for dinner.  It was all delicious.  We spent the rest of the night playing some games and finished it off with some dessert of rainbow cones that dad picked up earlier that day for all of us.  This is a classic from my childhood that is an absolute favorite. 

Monday Teddy and I enjoyed a terrific day together.  After our morning run we decided to head to the park to play some tennis.  I am NOT a tennis player.  I played badminton in high school and it is quite different to hit a super bouncy ball and an extremely light birdy.  Plus I'm just way out of practice in general.  So, I fully expected to make Teddy run all over that court, but to my surprise we actually got a few good volleys going. 

After that we grabbed some lunch at home and decided to go catch a movie.  We decided to see Going the Distance.

It was a girl (Drew Barrymore) meets boy (Justin Long) story where the girl has to leave NYC to move home to San Francisco in 6 weeks after they fall in love, and they try to make it work long distance.  Another predictable romantic comedy?  Maybe, but this was a rated R romantic comedy, and it got fairly raunchy.  It was ripe with funny one liners, hilarious scenes, and plenty of awkward humor.  All in all Teddy and I really liked it. 

After the movie we headed home to make some dinner and spend the rest of our long weekend relaxing together. 

All in all, two great weekends back to back.