This weekend was one of those that you just live for… not much to do, so of course, you can do A WHOLE LOT! The weekend started with a wedding on Friday night that Sarah and I played for… we had a great time helping out (and making some extra money), and made some connections with one of the wedding coordinators and a gentleman on the pastoral care staff at VCC. They seemed impressed by Sarah and I and hopefully they’ll be able to recommend us in the future. We’re planning a new website and hope to put together some “promotional materials” for our wedding business, but for now we’re just relying on business cards and word of mouth…

We got home around 8:30 (after stopping off for some yummy chocolate-chip cheesecake from Frisch’s!) and spent the rest of the evening watching some DVR’d TV… nothing better! It was great to just be able to hang out, stay up late and know that we had NOTHING URGENT to do tomorrow. Grocery shopping for dinner was already complete, and the rest of the day was just going to be spent cleaning the house in anticipation of company… good times!

Got up Saturday morning and took our first stab at using the whole grain pancake mix — we subbed this out with our regular Bisquick in an attempt to eat healthier — and enjoyed quite a delicious breakfast. We even included turkey bacon cause Mimi is allergic to pork products (poor Mimi!!) and really enjoyed the entire meal. Very tasty! Afterwards we headed out to Hope Depot to formulate an attack plan for creating our vegetable/herb garden (see Sarah’s post) and ended up getting all of our seeds (except the Mr Stripey tomatoes) and the starter kits. Next we picked up the car from the shop, picked up the meds from Walgreen’s, and headed home. Since it was close to lunch, Mimi decided to spring for the meal and we got subs from Jersey Mike’s. I’ll tell you tat the cheesesteak I had was pretty DARN good… especially considering I’m from Philly (Yo).  The roll wasn’t Amaroso’s, but it was pretty good nonetheless.  :-)

More cleaning after lunch, and a little work in the yard raking up some left over leaves (more to come on that later). We had our good friends over Joe & Shannon over for dinner on Saturday night and had some fantastic filets with a balsamic reduction, blue cheese mashed potatoes and broccoli. Shannon brought some fantastic white chocolate & cranberry cookies (which we are STILL snacking on!) and Joe brought some yummy “adult juice” as I like to call it… for Ethan’s sake.  :-)  We ended up talking till way past 11pm and ran out of time to play games…  you always know a good friendship when you’re having a good time just talking and not doing anything else! Here’s to more fun in the future!

Got up Sunday, went to church for a great message (and fantastic music by the band!). I had a hard time concentrating through the special video because the soundtrack featured music by one of our music pastors (Jim) using the new keyboard synth (Omnisphere) that the church bought and that I’m ITCHING to play. Still, it was quite a moving time…

We were going to go home to get Ethan fed and in bed in time for nap, but Sarah and I decided to be spontaneous and changed plans, stopping off at Cracker Barrel for a nice quiet lunch with E. After that, nap time — and I started in on the yard… ugh.

Sarah helped out by raking a lot — all in all, we ended up with 5 full bags of yard debris, not including the sticks and stuff. I’m sure there was a lot left from the fall and possibly even back to last fall… as a result, our grass isn’t doing so well in the back. Our yard is difficult to maintain anyway, with all the exposed tree roots, popor drainage, sticks, stones and doggie “surprises”… and I’m sure having so much stuff matted down into the lawn was helping our grass grow.

Dinner was a crockpot meal (stew) that we started in the morning, and the rest of the night we spent just chillin’. I was spent…

Advil — take me away…