It’s Sunday night and Joe and I have assumed our usual Sunday night positions on the couch: I’m blogging (um, obvi) and he’s watching a show on Netflix on his iPad. Oh, and Earl the pug is content to lay at our feet and snore the evening away while Teacher Man is already upstairs sleeping.
It’s the simple things, really, that make me happy.
So our weekend.
It wasn’t overly booked, so I actually got a lot of Christmas shopping done – mostly by shopping local, which I love. My little city has many unique shops, full of home decor, clothing and other goodies. It was “Occasional Sale Weekend” in town, which meant that some of the shops are only open the first full weekend of each month. I spent a couple of hours downtown, walking between shops, and finding unique gifts for a few people on my list.
Atelier is one of my favorite shops in downtown Buffalo – the owners carry a fun mix of new and repurposed home decor, jewelry and other items – all with a French flair. (I look funny in this photo, but I like my hat.)
Saturday afternoon Joe had his annual Christmas recital, where he played “Linus and Lucy” to near perfection. Joe has a tendency to get really nervous – I mean REALLY nervous – before a recital, but the last couple of recitals have helped him control his nerves a bit and learn how to work through that. If Joe is like me, he will always get nervous before performing (I think it’s pretty normal, yes?) but I hope he’s also figuring out he can’t let it overwhelm him.
My boy looks soooo grown up here. Yikes.
Isn’t this a fun gift from Joe’s piano teacher? She made ornaments for each of the students with some of the music from the song they played at the Christmas recital. Love this!
After the recital, we went back home to try a new recipe Joe found on Pinterest. Well, he wasn’t actually on Pinterest, but he was watching me peruse Pinterest while procrastinating on his math homework and this recipe caught his discerning eye – Cheez-It Chicken Tenders.
This would seem to combine two of his absolute favorite things in the world to eat, so he’s been begging me to try it. I did, and while it wasn’t a total #PinterestFail, it was more of a #meh experience. Regardless, it was a fun experiment, which we capped off after dinner with a family viewing of “Elf.” Would you believe Teacher Man has never seen that movie?
I know, that’s just wrong.
And now here we are … Sunday night again and heading into a busy week, which includes a quick overnight work trip to Fargo, of all places. It’s an annual trip our office makes in December, which usually coincides with ridiculously cold temperatures and wind chills well below zero. Seriously – this happens almost every year. The weather forecast, however, looks much better than that for Tuesday and Wednesday. Thank you, winter weather gods, for giving us a break this year.
I leave you with my favorite photo of the weekend. Have a great week, everyone!
