Our Weekend in Three Short Paragraphs

The long weekend is over and it's time to get back into our normal routine. Except it's not normal yet. Hubby is still having odd, short work hours & I'm recovering from sleep deprivation. Falling asleep around 11:00pm & waking up at 2:30am is never a good idea, but especially a poor choice when driving an hour each way to the airport. So forgive any randomness or incoherent thoughts, well more than the norm anyway.

So, like I've mentioned before my mother in law came to visit for the long weekend, arriving Thursday afternoon and leaving in the wee hours of the morning today. The kids had so much fun with her. Michael & her played outside a lot, snuck treats when mom {I} wasn't looking, and learned how to ride a bike. Lydia was especially sweet letting grandma hold her, give her sugar & kisses. I was a little worried because she had shied away from other family members while we were in California - just a phase for her age. But I think she felt more comfortable since we were home. We celebrated Michael's 3rd birthday while she was here. I left the streamers up from the week before, we blew up balloons & baked a cake. He was so excited and had a lot of fun. For his birthday grandma gave him his very first bike, with training wheels of course. She even thought of a little helmet, knee pads & elbow pads. He'll wear the helmet but doesn't like the pads. We tried them out on Lydia - elbow pads on her knees for when she's crawling around outside - good idea in theory not so much in reality. Sunday we drove into downtown Nashville. My mother in law wanted to see the Grand Ol' Opry and find some cowboy boots. We found our way to the Opry but she didn't find any cowboy boots that she liked. We did find a lot of other shops to check out while we were there though. I took some pictures of the old buildings, hubby in a cowboy hat {I'd post but he would none too happy about that}, horse & buggy, and street signs that looked like guitar picks. The most interesting thing I saw though was this mailbox that looks like R2D2. It was odd for two reasons, one - it looked like R2D2 and second it was in the middle of downtown Nashville. You've got to understand that most everything in the area was all about country music, cowboys & horses.

The rest of the time we talked, shopped & cooked. I tried chocolate gravy for the first time and really liked it. I mean who couldn't ♥ an excuse to eat chocolate in the morning? I guess it was something that my mil's mother used to make and she's made it, now I'll make it for my kids. Michael loved it - like I said chocolate in the morning. Shawn doesn't like it though and neither do his brother or step dad. Apparently it's also one of our state foods {mil was doing some research out of curiosity}. The chocolate gravy, chocolate nut pie & some kind of stew were three that I remember. I don't remember the meat in the stew but it didn't sound appetizing so I think I'll stick with all items chocolate. Well, my eyes are shot and I can't think straight anymore so that's it for today. Thanks for stopping by. I'll be posting Works for Me Wednesday tomorrow. It's an old wives tale home remedy thing that my mil showed me this weekend and it worked so come back to see.