Weekend Update

What a fabulous weekend! It's funny how much more time I seem to have when I am disconnected from the world.  After Friday's storm, we lost our phone and Internet connection and it wasn't restored until about an hour ago.  We also had extremely limited cell phone service because apparently our house is situated in a black hole.  Who knew?  ;-)

Anyway, Friday was a relaxing night.  Monte and I stuck with tradition and made it a pizza night.  Layla joined us, but she ate homemade heart-shaped calzones with soy cheese and spinach and bacon pinwheels.  We were all very tired from an exceptionally long week, so we went to bed very early (9:30!) I don't know why I don't turn in early every night!

On Saturday, Layla and I met my parents and sister at Barnes and Nobles, where Layla went to story time and colored a picture, while I test-drove the Nook and got a free cup of coffee! When Monte got off of work, he took Layla shopping.  I got some housework done, read (The Winds of War by Herman Wouk) and went to Joann's Fabric.  In the evening, we went to our nephew Jordan's birthday party.  He's seven years old! When Monte and I first started dating, Jordan was only 11 months old.  It's been amazing to watch him grow up.  I love being an aunt to him and his brother, James, and my other nephew, Christian.   Layla is lucky to have these three wonderful boys for cousins!

On Sunday, we woke up early and went to breakfast at a diner.  We found two nearby estate sales, where we found some good deals.

We bought this end table for next to Monte's bed for only $20.

And I got these new photo albums for $3 each.  I was very excited to find these because I am in the process of putting ALL of my loose photos into albums.

We took Layla to the playground, but the ground was too wet, so we went home and pushed her on her backyard swing instead.  After lunch and a nap, we dropped off Layla at my parents' house and Monte and I caught a movie.  We went to see Unknown, which we both enjoyed.  Thanks guys for giving us some much needed alone time!

For dinner I made lemon chicken, garlic mashed potatoes and Asian-style vegetables. Yum! It was such a fun weekend.  I feel like we haven't been spending a lot of family together time lately, so this was just what I was craving.

Here is a random cute picture from a few weeks ago.  One of Layla's favorite things to do is to lead everyone in the room by their hand to our staircase.  She makes us sit down, and then she grabs a plastic circle (the rim of her toddler plate) and goes "Beep! Beep!"  She loves "driving" us around!