Friday Goodness

1.  FAMILY DINNERS – Since my sister and her husband moved back to town, we have more family closeby than we ever have before, and though it’s amazing to be able to see them whenever we want to, it’s still not enough.  I’ll always wish we lived closer to more of our family, or better yet, that they lived closer to us.  I miss family.  I crave family time.  And yet for most of the year, it’s just not possible.

So on weekends when some of our family plans to visit, I’m like a kid at Christmas.  Tonight, around dinnertime, my parents will roll in from Virginia.  It won’t be a long visit, but it’ll be a good visit. They always are.   And if I sound excited, you should see Jaia.  Grandparent time for her is the bees knees and she’s already asked me 30 times this morning if Nana and Papoo are going to be here soon.  Not just yet, my little Smurfling.

2.  EMPTY GARAGES – When we gutted our kitchen, we ended up with a large amount of ‘waste’ that I wouldn’t let Dan throw out, despite his repeated requests.  I couldn’t imagine it tossing it in the dump when we could take our ‘perfect but just not our style’ cabinets, countertops, sink, etc. to the local Habitat for Humanity and hope they could get some use out of them.

That was in October.  And they sat in our garage since then.  We have a beautiful double garage that sat so full of crap all winter, that we were forced to park both vehicles outside.

Our plan this weekend was to take advantage of Papoo being here to fill both cars a couple of times and do drop-offs at the HFH depot and be rid of all the old kitchen remnants for good.  Dan decided that first he would put them out on the curb and hope someone would take them off our hands instead.  I laughed.  There was no way.

20 minutes after he stacked a mountain of cabinets on our front lawn, the doorbell rang.  “Are you giving these away?”  She asked.  I laughed again.  Seriously?  Did that just really happen?  Dan was right and I was wrong?  😉

And right he was.  10 minutes later, a trailer pulled up and hauled away each and every one of them.  Perhaps we should have offered them the countertops and sink too!

3.  BAKING WITH JAIA – She loves it because it’s messy.  I love it because she loves it.  And today we are attempting a super fun baking project (or so it looks, anyway).  All the supplies were purchased and are sitting on the shelf until this afternoon.  If the recipe works and is easy enough for an amateur to attempt (me, not Jaia) I’ll it and the in progress pictures later today.  I’m excited – for the baked goods, not the mess.

4.  FACIALS – Ok, it’s scheduled for Sunday, not Friday, but I’m already dreaming of it.  P

Pregnancy has been anything but kind to my skin.  There were a few weeks over Christmas that I looked more like a teenager in the midst of puberty than an adult in my mid-thirties.  And though that was the peak, my skin has not improved whatsoever since then.  I even had one friend admit to me that I look grey.

Awesome.  Aren’t you supposed to glow when you are pregnant, and not look half-dead?  Bring on the facial.

5. BLUE EYES – There’s nothing like a blue shirt to make my baby’s baby blues pop.  I swear I could stare at her gorgeous eyes all day – and some days I just do.