I would have to say that this has been such a great weekend. Its always great to spend time with friends and family and this weekend for me was like a family reunion. Betsy emailed us a back in late march early april to see if we would like to come out for the 4th of july and all the pieces seemed to fall together pretty perfectly and Livi, Anne, Steph, Emily and I were able to spend a wonderful weekend hosted at Chez Mccallon.

Night one consisted of a wonderfull grilled dinner at the house followed by college photo albums. I was starting to fade but when those albums came out and we started reliving old happenings…. good times is all I can say.

Saturday, a scrumptious breakfast and the Argentina/Germany world cup game (dissapointing match up) followed by tooling around town followed by a bbq at a friends house. This was one of the few times I wished I could partake in the drinking parts of the merriment, but as it was even being sober and out with the ladies was highly amusing (honestly not an angle I get to see it from very often).

Today was a classicly slow morning filled with a recovery routine of tv then lounging at the pool. We had dinner and came home to wait for the fire works and while we were waiting the ladies threw me a baby shower! I was so surprised and felt so loved it was wonderful. This baby already has a set of aunties who love him.

We decided to watch the fire works from the balcony which was not the greatest of views, but I was happy being with friends (plus that meant we didn’t have to try and get anywhere and back). We later ended up watching the boston fireworks display on tv and I have to say, the consensus among the group was that boston had the superior light show. We has been able to see the dc show on tv as well so it was a fairly even comparison.

I would never have guessed 15 years ago when I went away to college who I would meet or what hijinks we would get up to but I am so glad everything went the way it did because I have a group of people with whom I share a very unique set of experiences with and who speak the same language I do, although they are far more poetic about it than I. I am glad college ended and more glad that the best part of the experience lives on in my relationships with the people who found me there.

Tomorrow I fly home, back to my house and hubby and puppy and kitty. It will be great to be home (I get to watch my sciency shows at home without the cruel mockery of my bffs which is why I love mario even more). It will be much cooler and I will carry with me memories of sophisticated conversations and civilized behaviours

Sweat and love equity to help me finish the studio.

Gift certificate for Home Depot or Lowes.

Gift Certificate from JoAnn Fabrics (because I love fabric, and I have a wedding coming up).

Gift Certificate for Amazon, Borders, or Barnes and Noble (Because I like to read and stuff). Or something from my Amazon Wish List (I won’t be able to tell if anything was purchased)

Gift certificate from Fry’s Electronics (Renton Location – 425-525-0200)

Fun things from Etsy.com

Update (12/1)

A shopping trip for a new jacket (something allweather that looks grown up)

A personal Solar charger for my phone/mp3 player (http://www.mysoldius.com/)

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More to come as I think about it.

This Thanksgiving weekend was a wonderful one. Let’s begin with the fact that it was a four day weekend. Its really hard not to love that.

Day one of four started out with a thanksgiving miracle, I found socks that matched! (I know its the little things that fill me with wonder). This year I had wanted to have thanksgiving at our house with our new kitchen and all. Mario had said that we could have it at our house if the kitchen was done, but alas it was no where near done. Never fear though, my mom was to the rescue and she offered up her house for everyone to come to. So we had a dinner for both our families. And an extra special part of it was that my sister and Andy were able to come up from portland. I had not gotten to see my sister since the engagement so that was really nice. And they had never met Mario’s family so that was cool too. Dinner was wonderful and everything went really smoothly.
After dinner we went and saw the movie Lars and the real girl. I would definitely recommend it. I had never been a huge fan of Ryan Gosling but he did a really nice job.

Friday, day two of four, Mario had to work. My mom and Mariana and Andy came over to the house and helped me put up the upper cabinets in the kitchen. Mario and I had put them together a couple weeks ago, but we hadn’t gotten them up yet. It was great to have so many extra hands. The kitchen is really taking shape.
When Mario came home that night I was putting one of the pantry doors on and he didn’t notice they had been put up. He said that he noticed things had been rearranged, but it wasn’t until he got to the middle of the kitchen and looked up that he saw what had been done. He was so surprised it was great.

Day 3 of four was very productive. To begin with we slept in very late.
But the real productivity came with our running of errands.   Apparently when we got all of our stuff from ikea there was a base cabinet that never came.  So we got the cabinet, and all the handles for all the cabinets and the pantry and stuff.  Luckily we had all the cabinet fronts (i say luckily because we bought them over a year ago and we can’t get new ones if we fuck up, or want to add a new cabinet to the design).  When we got home I couldn’t wait I had to put together the last base cabinet that we got from ikea.   Now we have the skeleton of our kitchen put together.

Sunday, day four of four, the last day of freedom.  We were on a roll kitchen work wise.  We have pretty much all the hardware for our cabinets.  We put the handles on the two largest pantry doors.  They are so cool, and now we can start moving things out of our living room and back into our kitchen where they are supposed to be(!!!!!) It will be nice to watch tv on the projector again without cans of soup impeading our view.  It was so nerv wracking though because A you have to drill a hole through the door, so there really is no going back once you start.  On top of that, the doors we have have been discontinued for the last year so really if we messed up it was going to mean some creative figuring out of how to fix it.  Luckily there were no mess ups.  We also started putting the handles on the upper cabinet doors.  That was hard because we had to drill through a metal.  At least though these doors are still available so if we really messed up we could go get some more.

So now we have 4 of the 6 upper cabinet doors up, the pantry doors are up and we just have to put the handles on the top parts.  The guy that is going to install our beautiful marble tile just came by the house to check it out so hopefully if his schedule permits he will be able to come and install the counter tops and the sink, and the dishwasher and we will finally have the kitchen that we have been dreaming about and working towards for this last year.

So that was my wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  It was filled with the people that I love and visible progress in our kitchen, both things that make me very happy.

(oh and the icing on the cake was Monday afternoon when we got a date reserved at the place we want for our wedding.)