A weekend at home

B and I had a lovely weekend here in central New York. As I said before, it was one of our first weekends home in quite a while. And I know I complain about being gone all the time, but you just can't imagine how much your life falls apart when you're never around on the weekends. Houses don't get cleaned, groceries don't get bought, bills get overlooked, wedding planning falls behind, etc. But I'm very hopeful as I look to the coming months, because I don't see too many weekends where we're away.

Friday night we went out for a few drinks to celebrate Ithaca Chick's 23rd birthday. Then on Saturday we met my mom for coffee and all of us went to Jaynes Ave house. We haven't seen them in so long, it was great to catch up. And we had a Try This! recipe for dinner! If you're a subscriber to the email you'll get to read about our wonderful dinner that we tried and see a lovely picture. In the meantime, here is sweet baby S opening her 1st birthday present from us - a new alphabet book by Steve Martin that I heard all about on NPR, The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!

Today I had a huge success in the progress of my back. As you know, I've been in physical therapy for about 4 weeks now to help stabilize my spine and my back. I've been doing exercises at home most nights and having appointments one to two times a week. And it must be working because I was able to make a major grocery shopping trip today without leaving Wegmans in tears. First time in years I've been able to do that!! As I said, we haven't been around much, so there haven't been many huge grocery trips. But I knew that this would be a big test of my progress. And honestly, I wasn't even expecting that much, just to be able to get through it better than before, so I was hugely surprised when we left and I was only in mild pain (without any painkillers). This is huge!!! I did my exercises immediately before leaving the house so my muscles would be tightened up and ready to go and it worked. Woo Hoo! I still have an extremely long way to go and am not cleared for any unsupervised gym activity at all, but this first step was a big one.

In other news, B made homemade sauce today and we got a little cleaning done. I also got to chat with my dear Feather Nester, who is (in theory) within days of delivering!! She and my mom (who flies into AZ on Friday for the birth of the baby) are in a mental tug of war with tiny baby. Feather Nester is sending strong "please get your booty in gear and say hi to your mother" signals, while my mom is sending "stay exactly where you are young lady until Auntie M can come assist in your birth!" signals. But like I said to both of them, the tiny one is the boss and no amount of wishing on either end is going to make her do anything she doesn't want to! Great planning for her future :)