What a Productive Day!

This was Mike's weekend to work.  I actually like it when he works because I get so much accomplished.  Don't get me wrong, I love having him around.  It's just that when he's home on the weekends I don't want to spend my weekend working around the house, I want to enjoy being with him.  However, since I work so many hours during the week I don't usually have the time or energy to do anything around the house in the evening.  Hence my weekend dilemma - work versus play.

Here was what I accomplished this weekend.

1.  Spent time with family

The kids and I went out for breakfast with my parents.  I was unpleasantly surprised by how expensive breakfast with the kids was but we go out (for breakfast) so infrequently I couldn't turn down the New York Strip with eggs request.  My omelet was pretty good too :)

We also had a baby shower for my cousin's wife.  It's their third baby and a "surprise" (ALWAYS keep your crib - it stops the surprises!) so her friends threw her a shower.  While I'm not a big fan of the games (I did win the word scramble game - I may not like them but I'm awfully competitive!) it was very nice getting to see extended family that I don't usually see.  The meal was pretty good too.

2.  Shopped

This didn't go so well.  I need a formal dress, undergarments, a swimsuit and some pants for our upcoming vacation.  I shopped for about two hours and ended up with nothing.  While the clothes shopping wasn't very productive I did pick up the present for the baby shower.  I'm going to have to find some more time to shop in the coming weeks.

3.  Baked & Decorated for Fat Tuesday

In case you didn't know, this Tuesday is "Fat Tuesday".  Things have been so busy at work that I thought it would be fun to celebrate, my way of attempting to build morale.  I baked a King's Cake, bought decorations and decorated the office for Mardi Gras.  Belle and I had a lot of fun decorating, below is the wall outside of my office.  Everyone has something outside their cube, plus I bought everyone masks and beads.

Here is the recipe I used for my King's Cake.  I haven't cut it yet but it looks really good!  Typically you would have a plastic or porcelain baby inside the King's Cake.  The person who finds the baby gets to throw the party next year.  I didn't have time to buy the baby so I'm going against tradition and not including one.  I guess that means I get to throw the party next year.

Since Michael didn't work this morning (he usually gets stuck working Sunday mornings) I surprised the kids with cinnamon rolls and blueberry muffins.  I was the kid's favorite mother today :)

4.  Cooked

We had an excellent dinner this evening.  At Christmas one of the stores ran a special where you could buy a turkey and get a free ham.  I took advantage of the sale and used our free ham tonight.  We also had corn, salad, sweet potatoes and corn bread - yum!

While I was in the kitchen I whipped up a batch of White Chicken Chili.  This is a recipe I had gotten from Weight Watchers about 10 years.  At that time one cup of chili was worth one point.  I'm trying to eat healthier, this is a good meal for me to take to work for lunch.

5.  A Clean House

OK - I can't take credit for this.  Between the kids and the women I hire to do my cleaning I have a spotless house and folded laundry.  Hey - even Wonder Woman had the other Amazons help her occasionally.  Hiring someone to clean my house was one of the best things I've ever done.  What would you do with four extra hours every other week?

5.  Wrote

While the ladies were cleaning my house, I was ensconced in my bedroom writing.  I was able to pound out a number of posts for the coming week.  Of course not as many as I would have liked but it was a start.  It's much harder getting a week's worth of posts out than I thought it would be.  I need to find a way to carve out a few more hours a week for writing.

As you can tell there really wasn't any relaxing this wekend.  I also didn't get any exercise in, to be honest last week wasn't a strong exercise week.  That will be changing this coming week.

Did you have a productive weekend?