A Super Fun Weekend - on the cheap!

It all started on Thursday. You know how sometimes, you just tumble into one of those good, meaty discussions with your spouse? Not a fight...just a really good, real, actual conversation? It's amazing how hard those are to come by sometimes, but Thursday night, somehow, we stumbled into one. Robb decided to "work from home" after that chat. I hadn't realized how hard we've been running and how much I have missed him. In another lifetime, he was in charge of his own time and we could spend as much time as we needed together, but that just hasn't been the case for a really, really long time.

So Friday rolled around gently. We had Charleigh's kindergarten orientation. I simply cannot believe that my baby is off to Kindergarten. She was so excited to be able to wear her singing monkey shirt (yeah, Target clearance $2.98) and her pink shoes (Yeah Old Navy clearance $1.50) for the first time.

After a lunch of leftovers, we headed down to the library and loaded the kids up with as many books as they could carry to help them weather the agony of the last few weeks of summer. The level of boredom these days matches the terror threat...definitely an orange. We spent a lovely half hour on the terrace of the library, me with a new Country Living magazine (bliss!) and Robb on a work call.



At home, later, Robb continued his afternoon projects around the house, blessing me the sanity. For about two weeks now, I would walk out into the garage and think, "HOW am I gonna pack this?" and turn right back around and walk out, completely overwhelmed. You remember the Christmas flood, right? Well, for 8 months now, we have had half our chest freezer packed with wet books. It was the only alternative for a lot of Robb's books which were simply soaked. I read that they could be kind of "freeze dried" sitting in the freezer, like a steak with no wrapping. So we tried it and lo and behold, the freezer was very frosty, but many of the books seemed to be surviving (there were some rather heartbreaking losses, though). He stacked books outside, sorting and we defrosted the freezer. When an empty plastic container for animal crackers presented itself, I spooned the frosty slush into it and took it outside, where many a neighbor kid was sitting, too hot to play.

An August snowball fight ensued!













When the "snow" was spent, a whiffle ball game got started and somehow, Mom and Dad joined in. Next thing we knew, a neighbor Dad joined in. I think I hurt myself. But we had a blast, playing until it was too dark to see. Not wanting the night to end,
I hauled out the goods to make smores. By 10 o'clock, Charleigh had consumed at least 3 of them...she's a big fan of the smore!










On Saturday morning, and I really do need to document this rare occurrance: Calvin slept in til 7:30 a.m. It was miraculous!!!! Our pantry was bare of anything to make a breakfast out of, and so we headed out with empty bellies to the grocery store for donuts ($3.75). From there, we headed off to the Jones Center Farmer's Market to purchase two giant bags of local produce for 20 dollars. We also purchased a bushel of the biggest, juiciest peaches, from which Robb made his mouthwatering peach salsa. For the rest of the afternoon, I was able to work fast and furiously on a number of small mosaics (pics to come). That night, we settled down to a dinner of corn on the cob, fried zuchini and roasted chicken legs, followed by a movie night ala' Netflix; The kids loved BABE paired with zuchinni bread warm from the oven.

And then there was Sunday. And that really deserves its own post.