Weekends are to be Enjoyed

I've come to the realization that weekends are to be enjoyed. I know that may sound weird, because it's one of those obvious things in life, but it was not always so obvious to me. When I was working, the weekends were hard to enjoy because those 48 hours were spent getting all the things done that I didn't have time to do during the week. They were filled with grocery shopping, house cleaning, errand running, and other nagging to-dos. Occasionally, if we let everything else fall behind, we'd make time for a family outing or a party. That left very little time (ok, no time) for relaxing and enjoying. And to be honest, I didn't enjoy the kids on the weekends because I was so consumed with all my chores. I know that sounds terrible, but it was my reality. People would tell me "The housework will be there. Just enjoy your kids." That's true - the housework was always there, and if I didn't do it, it was never going to get done. How long can you go without doing it?

Now that I don't have a (paying) job, my weekends are so different. I actually enjoy them. Because I've done all (or most) of what NEEDS to get done during the week, I get to spend my weekends doing fun stuff with my family. It's really nice actually, and it's made me realize what I really missed out on these last several years.

This weekend Bud had to work, so that kinda stunk, but me and the boys had some fun anyway. Friday was the exception - Ryan came home a little early from school with a tummyache, but that didn't last long. By that evening, he was feeling better, eating dinner, and was back to normal on Saturday. Their soccer games got cancelled due to weather, so we went down to Brooks and Case's and played for little while, then we headed to the movies with Kelli, Jason, Ashton and Timothy to watch Thor. We don't really know all the Avengers' stories, so I felt lost during about 95% of the movie, but we enjoyed it anyway.  The boys decided to stay the night with Kelli and I returned home to cook a belated birthday dinner for Bud. His favorite dinner - steak with peppercorn cream sauce, roasted potatoes and corn. Yum!! We followed dinner with a Redbox movie and it was a very nice evening with just the two of us.

Sunday morning, I picked up Brooks and headed to church where I met back up with my kiddos. After church and Sunday School, we came home for lunch and JD and I played a little game of basketball. He won, of course, 15-13. Then we headed back out - this time to the skating rink!!! The boys are learning how to skate, so we spent a couple of hours there. And let me tell you, when you're 36, it hurts a lot more to fall on that hard floor. I had one good spill while I was there (after running my skate over poor little Ryan's fingers) and felt it in my neck and back for the rest of the evening. Skating is not for old people!!! LOL!

After skating, we went back to church for Awana. Bud got off a little early and met us for dinner afterwards.

So we didn't do anything really spectacular, but it was just a really nice weekend with my family. I didn't do any house cleaning (saved all that for today), and it was fun hanging out and doing things together. It's amazing to learn how much I truly missed by spending so much time and energy working at the office. I thank God everyday for the opportunity to truly enjoy the gifts He's given me.

3 Blind Mice in a Scavenger Hunt

Last weekend, Stacie, Rosanne and I participated in the City Solve Urban Race in downtown San Antonio. It's a scavenger hunt where teams of 2-4 are given a set of 10 clues they have to solve in order to find each checkpoint. At each checkpoint, we had to take a photo of the checkpoint and we all had to be in the photo as well.

Costumes are optional. And we went all out.

It was well worth it though, because we won the costume contest. The prize isn't worth bragging about (a Jammy Pack which is a fanny pack with speakers in it), but winning is. We were pretty proud of our 3 Blind Mice costume. We got tons of compliments everywhere we went, and people stopped us all day long to take our picture. Haha. It was so much fun.

They started the race by giving us a clue and based on our answer, we had to go to a certain intersection. Luckily, we could use our smart phones for this race, otherwise, it would have been a HUGE guessing game. And I'm usually really terrible at guessing.

Once at that intersection (with about 400 other people), we got our list of 10 clues. So we sat down right where we were at and worked on solving those 10 clues. The answers to our clues told us where the checkpoint was. Once we had that, we started making our rounds to each checkpoint at which we had to take a photo with the logo/signage and the 3 of us. That was the challenging part - trying to hold the phone at such an angle that we could get the sign and the 3 of us with our big ol' ears in the picture. We had lots of laughs trying to do that. At some of the checkpoints, we also had to do a challenge or activity.

At this checkpoint, one of us (lucky Stacie) had to ride a bike to the Tower of Americas to pick up a button and come back. This was our last checkpoint of the day, so Stacie was a little tired when she started and even more tired when she got back. But lucky for me and Rosanne, we got to sit down and rest for a few minutes while we waited on her. (Ever seen a mouse riding a bike? It's pretty cute actually.)

The race started and ended at the Friendly Spot Restaurant. That was such a neat little place. We ended up coming in ahead of only 5 other teams (LOL!) but that's ok because we had so much fun. And it was our first race so we were just trying to figure things out too. Next year, it's on!! Although, we've got to think about how we're going to top our costumes. We've got a reputation to uphold.