little black journal

We’ve had a wonderful weekend – it’s been a good mix of having fun and getting stuff done. We had an errand to run in Tacoma yesterday and decided to check out Point Defiance while we were down there. This turned out to be the perfect perfect-weather getaway – a park with a nice variety of beach, garden, and forest.

It felt so good to aimlessly wander for a couple of hours, without having any reason to rush back home for anything. More and more, Shane and I are seeing the value in getting out of the house and enjoying each other; this is so much more important than having a clean home or catching the basketball game on TV. However, that said, after our day of fun yesterday, we did decide to spend a good part of today on housework. 4 loads of laundry done; 3 boxes of stuff pulled out of closets and put in the Goodwill pile; 4,000 computer/TV/video cables sorted and neatly coiled (this is a bit of an exaggeration, but anyone who is married to an IT guy will know what I’m talking about…); 3 bedrooms vacuumed and dusted; 2 toilets scrubbed; and something like 100 weeds pulled from our yard. It was a full day – we definitely earned the bottle of wine that we enjoyed out in the early evening sunshine of our backyard. The best part of this weekend? The fact that it’s not over yet! Looking forward to our Monday off!

We just enjoyed a fantastic weekend with my family down in Silverlake, Washington. My parents rented a cabin in celebration of my dad’s birthday, and my brother, sister-in-law, and niece came up from Portland. Lots of laughing, lots of eating, and lots of watching/holding/falling in love with my newborn niece. She is eight weeks old now and is much changed since I saw her just 4 weeks ago. She is looking around a lot more, doing a lot more wiggling, and has a whole new bank of facial expressions. I caught her smiling just a couple of times, though she refused to let us capture this darling little upturn of her lips on camera. Maybe next time… I caught myself smiling as well several times this weekend as I watched my family enjoy each other – seeing Shane and my brother throw the frisbee around, listening to my parents playfully tease each other over a card game of Quiddler, watching my sister-in-law lovingly care for my niece. And our afternoon stroll in the woods definitely renewed my appreciation of the outdoors (it’s impossible not to appreciate the outdoors on these 85-degree days in Washington). I have much to be thankful for.