Good stuff for me!

I hope this is the beginning of a good few months for me. I'm feeling good after some recent events, and my birthday is coming up, so that's always fun. This weekend was a really nice time all around...

I guess it began with a bit of unpleasantness, when an after-hours thing at work Friday caused me to be late for, and ultimately miss Kindergruppe (hope things weren't too nuts for you, mom, but roads were slick, so I'm glad I didn't stick to my original logistics plan).

Saturday was nice, though - grocery shopping & a little bit of house straightening up before babysitting Logan and then having folks over for dinner. Logan is too cute with his trying to scootch around, and we had lots of fun singing and playing with my neat blue water bottle. I felt really bad when I made him cry after laughing at him - he was in his high chair, and I was feeding him some oatmeal but he kept playing with his feet. He ended up pulling his sock off, sticking it straight into his mouth, and I laughed so hard I made the kid scream for 10 minutes. Oops - hopefully he'll forgive his Godi. :-)

Saturday night dinner was a hit - I found a recipe for Gorgonzola stuffed chicken with nutty brown rice that was super easy, but I think very impressive as well. Trey got everything started, and it wasn't until about 8pm while I was driving home that I realized I forgot to pick up the asparagus we were going to serve along side. Fortunately there's always plenty of broccoli in the freezer - I had to laugh when I was complimented specifically on how good it was (Jen: "Wow, this broccoli is really good. What did you cook it with?" Me: "Uh, salt & pepper." Jen: "How'd you cook it?" Me: "Threw it in the microwave in a casserole dish for a few minutes."). I aim to please.

Sunday was our 6th wedding anniversary. After my normal church things in the morning, and Trey's concert in the afternoon, we I celebrated by blowing way too much on an incredible dinner at Joe's in Chicago. And no, not Joe's Crab Shack - Joe's, the place that's famous for stone crabs. We were lucky to have a gift card so we could totally splurge, too. :-)


I'm really glad that I noted it was our anniversary when I made the reservations, because it gave us the perfect little booth in the back - it was quiet and a little dark, which gave us a chance to have a very private feeling dinner. I was planning on getting all mushy and going into a speech about how I feel like we've had a really good year despite Trey's job "transition" and the crap with our property taxes, and though the atmosphere was perfect I felt like we were having too much fun to really get gooey, so I just mentioned it and we kept having fun.

The funniest part of the day, however, was when we exchanged gifts. The 6th anniversary is iron, and I decided to get him something for the garden - ended up with a gazing ball on an iron pole (post?) that had iron shaped into a bird at the top. He admitted that he had a hard time and he felt bad just getting me something for the house, but that's all he could think of. He produced a decorative iron tower thing that had really neat candle holders on it that I really think is cool...only the bag the candle holders were in made be laugh, since it was from the same store I got his gift from. I told him he was going to laugh when I brought out his gift, but I think it went over his head until he actually saw it. It's fun how we think alike. :-)


I finally got a little bit of good news today - I did actually get my very small raise. 4.5% on top of not very much is still not very much, and it's certainly not really a promotional increase, but considering how things are going here I'm pleased. Lots of folks are getting promotions in title but not in salary, and lots of directors who are putting salary increase requests through the Executive department are getting shot down, so I feel like I won!

Ok, enough for now - hope everyone's having a great week!