Weekend Recap: Sweethearts Weekend

Ahh Valentine's Weekend, you've come and gone again. Valentine's has always been a bit tricky at our house because of when it falls: less than a week before my birthday and barely 3 weeks after Eric's birthday. Needless to say we don't always go all out for it. This year we actually ended up having our "Valentine's" dinner last night. Whoops. Such is life. But before you jump our cases about it, just know that we were quite busy doing lots of other fun things......

We went our separate ways on Friday and it worked out perfectly. Eric spent the afternoon/evening at the high school wrestling sectional tournament watching the kids he coaches. While I spent the evening at the dance studio doing hair/makeup test runs for competition before we sent the mommas home and kept the girls for a dance team sleepover. I forgot how giddy girls get over sleepovers. I'm pretty sure we had a 4 hour dance party and they never got tired of it. Our dance team has grown a bit this year, as we've added a "mini" group and a few other younger dancers to the mix. The party was a huge success got me even more excited about our first competition in a few weeks. We have our dress rehearsal this weekend where they get to practice their routines on stage in their costumes and I can't wait!

Little dancers playing DJ

I made treat bags for the girls and put quotes on them....of course! Inside were little treats with corresponding sayings on them.

I hate to admit it, but I ended up leaving the party early on Friday. I had to be in Montgomery early on Saturday for P.E.O. so I told the other teachers good luck and headed home around 11. I fully intended to heading to bed as soon as I got home, but Eric had rented The Martian, and I've really wanted to watch it, so I gave it a try to see if it could hold my attention that late. Spoiler alert (not really): It did, and I think we finally crawled into bed around 1:30AM. Ugh. The movie is fantastic, though! I highly recommend it.

Despite our late bedtime, I still had to be up bright and early Saturday morning for my meeting, which was fun as always. After a quick grocery store run, I made it home and back into my sweats for an afternoon on the couch. I finally pried myself up for a puppy walk after a couple of hours, and we ended the evening with dinner at some friends' house, playing revolving DJ and singing along to every song that came on.

I got up on Valentine's Day and made breakfast for us. It was a beautiful day so the pups got a couple of walks and I snuck in an afternoon run in my new running kicks my parents got me for my birthday. It had been nearly a year since I bought my last pair of running shoes and my feet/knees/legs were letting me know every time I went for a run. Let's just say I haven't felt that great on a run in a long time. We decided to forgo the romantic couples dinner in place of a new tradition that I really hope we continue. Since most of our friends had already done their big Valentine's dates on Friday or Saturday, we all got together Sunday night for Palentine's Dinner (I came up with that all on my own on Sunday....and yes I'm proud of it). It had literally been 6 weeks since we'd gotten together with our football watching crew and we'd all really been missing each other. We've all been busy with life and just haven't had time to do anything. I'm not saying it's been a while but since we were all together on New Years, one couple got married and other one got engaged....out of 4 couples! Lot's of life changes going on around these parts. =) And I'm ashamed to admit I took exactly 0 pictures of our Palentine's Dinner. Another reason we have to do it again next year. =)

Yesterday Eric was back to work but I had the day off...a big thank you to 2 of our Founding Fathers and fellow February birthday buddies George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for providing state and federal workers with President's Day. I took advantage of my day off and got some S*#T done. I tackled the clothes in our closet and now have 3 bags of clothes and a bag of shoes to donate. I also decided to be an adult and swapped out all of my mismatched hangers for slimline hangers and I have so much more space now. I'm embarrassed at how many articles of clothing I "found" that I didn't even know were missing. It's amazing how much better I feel after I purge clothes, and it always shocks me how much I am willing to get rid of....this coming from someone who hates to throw things away because of emotional attachments. I have to catch myself in a mood like I was in yesterday and toss, toss, toss!

 I know you can't tell very well from the pictures but in the before picture, my clothes took up nearly the entire top now. Now they only take up about 2/3 of it. 

I think the biggest change here is that I eliminated the pile of clothing that's sitting under the hanging clothes, in addition to the deletion of several items that haven't been worn in a few years. 

This little booger "helped" by taking a very long nap on my sweaters. 

We finished up the evening with our Valentine's Dinner....Finally! I bought some fresh tuna steaks for us on Friday and was afraid they were going to go bad if we didn't cook them last night. I pan seared them and turned my kitchen into a training ground for firefighters. No, there were no flames and no danger. I forgot how the kitchen fills with smoke when I try to pan sear sesame seed coated fish on very high heat. It was bad enough I had to open all the doors and windows in the kitchen and still couldn't stand right next to the stove. After the coughing and gagging subsided, we enjoyed a fabulous tuna steak dinner with asparagus and a mixed green salad with (homemade) Asian Sesame Dressing. We topped it off with a tiramisu for dessert.

Oh and instead of flowers this year for Valentine's Day/My Birthday I got rocks.....

He did real good. =)