Today was an action packed Saturday. We got everything done and then some.
We started off this morning with some interesting homemade baked apple french toast. I'd made it last night and let it soak overnight, but I think I should have blended the cream cheese/egg mixture a little better because all the cream cheese ended up on top. It was good, but I don't think I'll be rushing to make it again soon (except that we'll be eating the leftovers tomorrow!).
Then, at 8:30 a.m. the DirecTV man showed up to install our new service. We refuse to pay the ridiculously high increased prices of Comcast so we're switching services. Next weekend, AT&T will be out to get our internet hooked up.
Since "Jeremy" took almost 4 hours to get us all set up we hung out outside and made our plans for the patio and visited with Mum and Justin when they each stopped by. We kept getting interrupted though by numerous pass-overs happening this morning.
We also took some time out to spy on our neighbors down the street who were having some kind of beauty pageant party going on. It was a group of young teenage girls being dropped off who were all wearing pageant sashes. Except for the boy who was dressed up like Woody from Toy Story. I don't think they were from gold nuggy days because they weren't period dresses. Some of them were wearing prom like dresses, others were wearing sundresses, one was wearing shorts and a tank top. It was mysterious and weird, but luckly we have this handy new fence we can peek through unobserved.
On a more productive note, Chris did do the finishing tap work to the sand in the patio area. We needed to make sure it was completely compacted before we laid the brick.
Once we were inducted to the satellite television family we hit the road and made a b-line for Home Depot where we picked up some aggregate stepping stones to inlay in our brick patio.
Next we went to Lowe's where we picked up 350 bricks. Luckily they got to load them in the truck. We just had to shrink wrap them down.
After lunch we got started on the patio. We made an assembly line where I unloaded bricks from the truck down to Chris' work area.
By dinner time Chris had the whole patio laid, pending some finish filing on the perimeter bricks that were slightly too long. We both liked the way it came out.
Nice, huh? This is the point at which Wilson and Raquel stopped by to say hello. I don't actually have any photos of them, if you can believe that, so you'll just have to trust me that they were here.
I called Chris in from his finish work at 5:30 to eat dinner, after which I headed out for a little get together with some work friends for a "spring swap". We were all bringing our no longer used clothes, shoes and accessories to swap with each other. I didn't get there until 6:30 (it started at 6:00) so most people had already sorted through the clothes, but thankfully nobody wore my size so I had my pick of anything sized S or M. But also to my disadvantage, nobody wore S or M clothes so there was very little I could use, but I did manage to snap a couple of tops and two skirts. It was fun, but it would have been better for me if I attended a swap with other midgets who wore S and M clothes. I also brought a bunch of jewelry with me which went over big. Nobody else brought any and my stuff was pretty nice, I just wear a different style now. Here's me sampling some of the clothes at the swap:
Captain Sleepy Pants wimped out at about 9:50 tonight so I sent him to bed while I watch QVC and blog. I was desperately tired earlier when Wilson was here, but now I've caught my second wind and even though it's almost 11:00 p.m. I'm not that tired. I'll have to remind myself that when I'm falling asleep in church in the morning!
We also took some time out to spy on our neighbors down the street who were having some kind of beauty pageant party going on. It was a group of young teenage girls being dropped off who were all wearing pageant sashes. Except for the boy who was dressed up like Woody from Toy Story. I don't think they were from gold nuggy days because they weren't period dresses. Some of them were wearing prom like dresses, others were wearing sundresses, one was wearing shorts and a tank top. It was mysterious and weird, but luckly we have this handy new fence we can peek through unobserved.
On a more productive note, Chris did do the finishing tap work to the sand in the patio area. We needed to make sure it was completely compacted before we laid the brick.
Nice, huh? This is the point at which Wilson and Raquel stopped by to say hello. I don't actually have any photos of them, if you can believe that, so you'll just have to trust me that they were here.
In addition to flowers they also arranged for a breakfast spread from Juice and Java to be delivered. There were bagels, muffins, coffee and orange juice. I couldn't eat any of it, but I did have some delicious coffee.
Let me rephrase that, Chris watched while Justin started leveling out the patio.
This time the boys broke out power tools to break up the soil and that made it go much faster. By the end of the evening the area was all excavated.
We went to Lowe's this afternoon and bought all the fixin's for the fence. $600 worth. Oye! Even though the panels are vinyl they really do look nice.
Gee, do you think this picture was posed? Boys!
Chris measured and marked where all the post are going to go. Now he and our friend Justin are going to dig the post holes this week after work.
We had a dinner date at Mum's at 5:00 for some ham extraordinaire. She made ham, homemade mashed potatoes (maybe she didn't know they make those boxed now), asparagus (ha ha Jessica) and fruit salad.
For dessert we had some lemon cake from a Barefoot Contessa recipe. Of course we made out with bags of leftovers and we each got to take a colored hard boiled egg. Not too bad for no effort on our part.
I also got a little scrapbooking in this weekend. I have a co-worker who's birthday is this coming Tuesday so I needed to make a card to go with her gift. I borrowed the cover from a design I found online, but the construction of the inside was my pure genius!
Check that out! I made the extra length a folded back flap that holds the gift card with the help of some stellar sewing along the edges. And by stellar I mean that it looks like a blind person sewed it. Whatever, nobody will notice because they'll be so impressed with the awesomeness of the design.