Things I Love Thursday: Jose Pepper’s

Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your . . . order.

My love of Mexican food has been well-documented. And I enjoy a wide variety of Mexican food, both in dishes and in restaurants. But we definitely have a favorite, a place we frequent so often that our favorite waitress actually knows what we will order.

I did throw her for a loop last week, though, and ordered the special.

Jose Pepper’s is a local chain in the Kansas City area, and we are blessed to have one within a few minutes from our house. And just a few minutes from my office. It’s a good life we lead here.

Seriously, we eat at Jose Pepper’s at least twice a month and always on major holidays such as birthdays and anniversaries. I realized we had a problem/issue/committed relationship when we ate there on Mark’s birthday . . . just 11 days after eating there on my birthday . . . and a couple months after eating there on Annalyn’s birthday.

Because what one-year-old doesn’t want to celebrate her big day with chips and salsa?

Actually, that kid of ours, well, she’s definitely ours. Because she looooves chips and salsa. She’s recently discovered cheese dip, and I’m telling you, it has changed her world. She does the most annoying and disgusting cutest thing: I give her a little chip with some dip, she sucks the dip off the chip and then hands it back for more.

Every time, I tell her, “We don’t double dip in this family.”

And every time, Mark snickers and says, “Whatever.”

Whatever, huh? I’ve noticed that he’s not the one dipping and dipping and dipping for her!

Anyway. I love Jose Pepper’s, because it is good, Americanized Mexican food – just the way I like it. Plus, the chips are thin and salty, the salsa is thick and mild, and the quesadilla gives the appearance of being almost healthy.

And did I mention the coupons?

Every few weeks, we get a Valpak, a bright blue envelope filled with useless coupons and flyers. Plus one brilliant promotion from Jose Pepper’s. In each Valpak, we get three coupons for free espinaca con queso. And if you get free espinaca, why wouldn’t you go there? Often?

[For the uninitiated, espinaca is a white cheese dip with onions, tomatoes and spinach. It is delicious and, I’m convinced, sent straight from heaven. And I say this with confidence, because one time I tried to make it. I followed a “just like Jose Pepper’s” recipe and everything. But it was not the same. It was not just like that free dish of cheesy goodness. It just . . . wasn’t right.]

And to top it all off – the friendly servers, the good chips, the yummy espinaca, the faux healthy quesadilla for me, the steaming fajitas for Mark and the little cups of applesauce for Annalyn – they play good music at Jose Pepper’s. I don’t know where they get it piped in from, but when I can hear the Beastie Boys, circa 1994 Janet Jackson, the Eagles and Jesse McCartney in one place? Well, I’m a happy camper.

Just to clarify – we order more than applesauce for Annalyn. But after chowing down on her double-dipped chips, all she has an appetite for is 4 oz. of applesauce.

Our family loves Jose Pepper’s. Does your family have a “place”? A “regular”? A restaurant where the waitress knows what you’re going to order?

For more Things I Love Thursday, head over to The Diaper Diaries.

A List of Important Things You Need to Know

UPDATE: Congratulations to BeckyJo and Debbie! (And thanks to Chelley for giving us a second book!) Your copy of Me, Myself & Lies will be on its way today!

For everyone else, please join us anyway. If you are having trouble finding a book online, check your local stores. Especially the Lifeway stores. The Lifeway store near me had several; I believe you can order and pay over the phone and have it shipped to you. The number to my store is 816-746-8080.

See you all on Monday! We'll chat live at 8:00 p.m. CST.

1. I’ve just learned that our Bible study book is out of stock on the Lifeway site. According to Beth Moore’s blog, you can call customer service and have them find one at a store near you. That number is 1-800-458-2772. However, I also have one book to give away. The trick is going to be getting it to you in time for our first session on Monday. So, if you want to do the study with us and haven’t gotten your book, leave a comment on this post before midnight. I’ll draw a random winner – and ship the book – tomorrow. (If you don’t know what study I’m talking about, you can read about it here.) And don’t worry – we’re just talking about the study in general on Monday. We’ll discuss the first chapter the following week.
2. Some of you may have noticed that I have begun replying to your comments via e-mail. If you’d like me to reply to you that way and haven’t gotten such a reply, that’s because I don’t have your e-mail address. The easiest way to make this all happen is to have your e-mail address linked to the account you sign in with. Colleen explains how to do this on her very helpful (and funny as all get out) blog.
3. I just want you to know that I have not forgotten my promise to share with you everything I’ve learned at the social media conferences I’ve attended recently. I even have a handy dandy folder with all my notes. It’s just hard to boil it all down to one post, and I haven’t gotten it done yet. But I will. Hopefully before people start talking about Web 4.0 . . .
4. I am now officially in love with two things named Arrested Development. Yes, you needed to know that.
5. Please help me out. I can’t decide which of these things is funnier: Awkward Family Photos or the literal video version of Total Eclipse of the Heart. What say you?
6. If you Twitter, you can follow me. I can’t guarantee wit or wisdom. But if you’re not a interactive marketing specialist here to make me money, I’ll probably follow you back.
7. My blog friend Annie is in Africa right now with the Mocha Club. You can read about her adventures at the Mocha Club blog (or click on the widget in my sidebar). And you can help for just $7 a month.
8. I wish with all my heart there was an easier way to make numbered or bulleted lists in Blogger.

Because I really don't have enough things to read.

I haven't been to the library lately. I have two overdue books and one book on reserve, but I just can't make myself go there. Partly because it's a pain to go with Annalyn these days. Apparently, it's more fun to push buttons on the self-checkout machine than to sit still while Mommy checks out her books. But partly because I just can't handle picking up one more thing to read.

But that's crazy! I love to read! Reading is my favorite thing! How can I feel this way? Where are these feelings coming from? Why am I exclaiming so loudly on my blog?

Oh yeah. If it's not the 118 blogs I subscribe to, it might be the five (5) magazines I'm reading at one time.

And I wonder why my head hurts and my eyes are getting blurry . . .

What's your favorite thing to read? How many magazines do you get each month?

You’re mowing the yard? Okay, I’ll empty the dishwasher.

We’re all about equity of workload at our house. So when we reached Sunday evening of this busy weekend and Mark said he’d mow the yard, of course my contribution was taking five minutes to empty the dishwasher.

Never mind that my to-do/wish list for the weekend had no less than 27 items, while his simply read, “Mow the yard.”

Ah well, it doesn’t really matter. When it came down to it, we decided to just lay on the couch and watch a movie. As anyone with a yard or dishes knows, it will all be there in the morning.

We had a great anniversary weekend. Despite a scare with a rash, Annalyn was healthy enough to spend the weekend with my parents. (According to our pediatrician’s nurse, the rash was roseola, which apparently is harmless. And it went away after a day or two.)

I began the weekend by taking full advantage of my Friday evening alone, doing such wild and crazy things as going to Hobby Lobby and Archiver’s to shop for scrapbooking supplies, driving through Burger King and splurging on a Whopper Jr., balancing my checkbook and watching Stacy and Clinton give Blossom a makeover. I was living the life, I tell you.

For our big anniversary date day, Mark and I drove over to Columbia. We didn’t go to school there, although we both wanted to at various points in our lives, but we did live 90 minutes north. In the middle of nowhere. So we spent those early years of our marriage traveling to Columbia whenever we needed to shop at a mall, see a movie in a theater with more than three screens or take a random road trip on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

More than once during our day, I noticed how we didn’t lack for topics of conversation. I love that. I love that even after all these years, we still want to talk to each other. Of course, even though our drive there was full of talking and laughing, our drive back was more jamming to the oldies on the radio and sitting in comfortable (or, for me, falling asleep) silence.

We ate lunch at a winery near Columbia. I’d made sure to have reservations, because I saw that they were having an arts and crafts festival there on Saturday. Turns out we didn’t need reservations and the festival may not have been the most successful of events, but, oh well. Our lunch was great, and the bartender was kind enough to take our picture. And even though we laughed at the fancy-schmany menu that used about 12 words to describe mashed potatoes, even Mark enjoyed the "frou-frou crap" that we ordered.

Gorgonzola cheesecake with tomato basil coulis and toasted Tuscan bread. In other words, yummmmmm!

Then we headed on in to Columbia, but since it was a crazy 90-something degrees out, we decided to figure out a Plan B. (Plan A was walking around downtown, checking out all the little shops and maybe getting some ice cream.) Plan B turned out to be doing a little shopping at the mall (Yes, we have malls here, but how often do we get to shop without a stroller and diaper bag along for the ride?) and then seeing a movie.

After taking in our old person (but cheap!) matinee, we headed downtown to walk around. The sun wasn’t so high, and the weather was a bit more tolerable. Of course, by then, the stores were mostly closed, so we just walked for a few blocks, admired the many bikes parked outside the many bars and dodged a few smelly hippies. (Ah, how I love college towns!)

And then, the best part of our day: Shakespeare’s. See, the whole reason for Saturday’s field trip was to eat cheap pizza and snag some new plastic cups. And eat pizza and get cups we did. Because we're classy that way. (Hey! We did start the day at a winery!) Anyway. We also sat and watched the college kids walk around and wondered if we’d ever really been that young. And we debated whether we like Shakespeare’s pizza because it’s good or because it reminds us of that fun time in life. And as we remembered that we'd always said we'd like to live in Columbia someday, we considered whether or not a college town would be a good place to raise a family. And that led us to look through all the pictures of Annalyn on our camera and talk about how much we missed her.

Here's our pizza. I considered showing you the empty pan that we were left with afterwards. But that's just too embarassing!

Things have changed, I guess. But you know, that pizza was delicious. So maybe some things stay the same. All in all, it was a good weekend, and we vowed to do it more often.

But first I’d better go empty the dishwasher.

What's your favorite place to get pizza? And how was your weekend?

Saturday Review: Australia

A couple months ago, Smitty and I had an interesting conversation. Life-changing, you might say.

Then again, maybe not, because it did revolve around People magazine’s sexiest man contest.

I kid, I kid! Okay . . . actually, I don’t. But I wish I did.

Our discussion had to do with Hugh Jackman, the magazine’s top guy. I said that I didn’t understand, that I didn’t get it. Because he’s such a scrawny, nerdy guy. He’s a little man, I said. And as a tall, not small girl, that’s just not appealing to me. And the same goes for Eric Bana, I threw in, just for good measure.

Smitty looked at me like I’m crazy, something that I will have you know happens on a regular basis. She claimed that both actors are not scrawny, nor are they short.

Wha???

So, as we do when any important question comes up, we turned to the internet. And, my friends, it turned out that I was wrong. Both Mr. Jackman and Mr. Bana are 6’2” or so. (No, I’m not looking it up again to get it exactly right. I have some limits, you know.)

[Random side note, because the rest of this post is so on topic: Jackman and Bana are also both from Australia, and they were both born in 1968. I believe this explains why they are essentially the same person in my brain.]
I’m here to tell you today that since watching Hugh Jackman in Australia, I fully accept just how wrong I was about him. As we watched the movie, I didn’t mention this. But Mark apparently noticed, too, and commented about his crazy muscles. (Hugh’s, not Mark’s. Sorry, honey.)

Aside from this revelation and a little bit of Australian history (which, let’s be honest, I could have learned from our friend, Wikipedia), I really didn’t get much out of the movie.

As a matter of fact, I felt exhausted, disappointed and a little bit depressed. I won’t spoil it for you, but not everyone has a happy ending. And if I’m watching a movie called “epic,” I’d like for everyone to have a happy ending.

I’m irrational like that.

According to 20th Century Fox, “Australia is an epic and romantic action adventure, set in that country on the explosive brink of World War II. In it, an English aristocrat travels to the faraway continent, where she meets a rough-hewn local and reluctantly agrees to join forces with him to save the land she inherited. Together, they embark upon a transforming journey across hundreds of miles of the world's most beautiful yet unforgiving terrain, only to still face the bombing of the city of Darwin by the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor.”

And this epic adventure is almost three hours long. For at least the last half of it, I kept thinking, “Surely this is it! It must be over now!” I should have kept a better eye on the clock. Because it was not over.

I’d heard that this movie was supposed to have beautiful cinematography, and before we rented it, I saw it described as being similar to Romancing the Stone. And since I like that movie – and the whole bickering man and woman fall in love while on an adventure genre – I thought it sounded like a good one.

I was wrong. Some scenes were, indeed, beautiful. Because Australia is beautiful. And some issues were, indeed, moving. Because history is moving. But the acting, the plot, the movie itself? Not that great.

Then again, maybe I just didn’t get it. I’ve never seen any of Baz Luhrmann’s other movies, so it’s possible I don’t get him. Even so, I wouldn’t give this one any thumbs up.

In case you’re still on the fence, here are my favorite bits from actual critics:

Australia tries to be a sprawling, romantic epic. Instead, it's a melodramatic exercise in tedium. Rather than being old-fashioned or classic, it's old-school and conventional. Instead of believable romance, it offers schmaltz and cliché. (USA Today)

Deliberately anachronistic in its heightened style of romance, villainy and destiny, the epic lays an Aussie accent on colorful motifs drawn from Hollywood Westerns, war films, love stories and socially conscious dramas. Some of it plays, some doesn't, and it is long. But the beauty of the film's stars and landscapes, the appeal of the central young boy and, perhaps more than anything, the filmmaker's eagerness to please tend to prevail, making for a film general audiences should go with, even if they're not swept away. (Variety)

The second half of "Australia," Luhrmann's attempt to pull off a wartime weeper, is so aggressively sentimental that it begins to feel more like punishment than pleasure. I left "Australia" feeling drained and weakened, as if I'd suffered a gradual poisoning at the hands of a mad scientist. (Salon.com)

So, now that I’ve left no mystery about how I feel about this movie, how about you? Have you seen it? Did you like it? (Feel free to disagree! Brenda did, and so did Time, Newsweek and TV Guide.)

I Do.

The first time Mark asked me to marry him, I was 16 years old. We were both in high school, and I was pretty sure he was joking.

Three years later, he asked again. This time, with a ring that I’d picked out and a spaghetti dinner he was so proud of.

I said yes both times.

Mark and I began as an unlikely couple, way back in 1994. As one classmate so delicately put it, what was a goody two shoes (that would be me) doing with such a troublemaker (yes, that was Mark)?

She was right. Rude, but right. And yet, somehow, it did work. We worked.

Today is the 10th anniversary of our wedding. That stressful, exciting, exhausting, wonderful, emotional day seems so long ago. But at the same time, I’m quite positive it happened just last year.

(Because I cannot possibly be old enough to have been married for a decade. Right?)

Mark and I went to the same high school in a small town. We were only two years apart, but we didn’t exactly run in the same crowd. (Although, it turns out, he was neighbors with my best friend, Smitty, and another best friend, David. And cousins with one of my best girlfriends, Kimi. I said it was a Small Town.)

We met at a football game, where I learned that Mark had a crush on one of my friends. Three of us sophomores talked to this senior, hinting that we wanted a ride to the big party taking place after the game. My friend Mindy and I chickened out in the end, because, well, you remember the goody two shoes remark from earlier, right?

But it seems I made an impression on young Mark anyway. I’d like to think it was my beauty and wit (I remember liking him most of all because he laughed at my jokes. Because I’m funny, people!) . . . but I have a feeling it might have been the annoying way I kept singing the song that was stuck in my head that night. It was 1994, so it could have been worse. I could have sung Sheryl Crow or [shudder] Crash Test Dummies. But instead, I sang – over and over and over – What’s Going On by 4 Non Blondes.

Anyway, our first date was the Homecoming Dance. It was also my first date. And . . . as my mother dragged out of me the next morning, my first kiss.

[Cue the “awwww.”]

We dated all through high school and through my first two years of college. Unless you count the time I tried to break up with him. Or the time he tried to break up with me. Oh, the drama, the angst, the tears. The beauty of a long-distance relationship.

Since we didn’t deal so well with the long-distance (while I was in college, and he was working at home), we decided the only logical thing to do was get married.

I was 19 when we made that decision. A freshman in college. You can just imagine how excited my mom was.

But get married we did. And I finished college. And we moved. And changed jobs. And fought – a lot. And figured out how to live with each other. And remembered how to laugh together. And learned how to cry together.

Just being honest here.

In the last ten years, we’ve lived in three apartments, two duplexes and one house. We’ve gone to more funerals than I want to remember, including his mom’s. I graduated from college, started graduate school, quit graduate school. Mark started and stopped college a handful of times. We’ve both lost jobs. We shared dreams, wishes, ideas, plans and prayers. We adopted two cats. We had a beautiful baby girl. We traveled to Seattle, Colorado, Branson, Florida, Virginia and Tennessee. And, oh yeah, more than a few road trips to Kansas, Des Moines and St. Louis.

We’ve racked up credit card debt – and paid it off. We’ve planted a church – and left several churches. We’ve made friends and lost friends. We’ve said things we regret, left things unsaid that should have been spoken, thrown things across the room and stormed out of the house in anger. And we’ve taken classes and gone to seminars and sat through counseling and read books – and learned how to live and love better than we ever thought possible.

Mark is an amazing man – a loving, accepting and forgiving, helpful, funny man. He has supported me through all sorts of ups and downs, and he’s helped me grow into a better person. He’s an incredible father, and the best husband I could want.

And he’s still making me spaghetti dinners to be proud of.

Happy anniversary, Mark. I love you – a lot.

It's kind of like an anniversary video. But not.

If I were just a little more tech savvy, I'd put together a great slide show to commemorate this occasion. One set to music. Yeah, that's what I'd do.

But since I'm not, I won't.

Instead, I give you a link to Dan Seals' One Friend, one of the songs we had sung at our wedding and a sentiment that's even more true today than it was then.

And, of course, a whole bunch of pictures.

As you can see, I was quite excited for my mother
to take a picture on my first date. Soooo embarassing at the time!
(And yes, of course I love the fact that I have it now!)

Mark's senior prom, 1995. Yes, all of that hair is mine.

It was quite the trend at our high school to get professional couple photos taken.
And by "professional," of course, I mean Sears. This was the fall of 1995.

My junior prom, 1996. My hair is pulled back in a banana clip,
because I just could not handle another prom night of bobby pins and hairspray.

My senior prom, 1997. Yes, I am quite pale, thank you.

My cousin Sarah's wedding, October 1996.
Because everyone looks beautiful in sleeves like that.

My dorm had a formal dance. Spring 1998.
My roommate decided to lay on the floor to take this flattering photo.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society black tie ball,
one of many work functions Mark has attended with me in the last decade.

Fall 2005. Or maybe 2004. After you've been married this long, it all blurs together.

Taking a nap during our fishing trip to Canada. I don't remember feeling happier than normal, but when I look at the pictures from that trip, I can see it. I see how happy Mark and I were to just be together.

The Three Amigos: Mark, Smitty and me at the Coors brewery in Colorado.

Honest, we don't drink that much beer. But apparently we document each occasion when we do!
Smitty, Mark and me at a concert a few years ago.

The Three Amigos (and a few others) partying like it's 1999 . . . in 2008.

And a family was born. October 8, 2007.

Another hospital photo. Because we were there for a long time.

Christmas 2007. We still weren't sleeping much then.

Summer 2008. Life was getting fun right around this time.

Christmas 2008. Mom and Dad had a great time figuring out the new tripod. Annalyn was not amused.

Thanks for taking this walk down memory lane with me. Have a great weekend!

Where's Glamour Shots when you need them?

I've had the same profile picture for several months now. I realize that using the same pic helps me create a brand and all that. But I'm kind of getting tired of the same pic!

So last night I decided to take a new one. Aside from the spots I saw for about half an hour after my little photo session, I don't think I did too bad. Check it out:

All right, maybe these pictures are pretty silly. So help me out. A lot of us don't like pictures of ourselves, so how do you deal with it? How do you get a good picture of yourself?

Mister Manager, Daytime Dilemmas and a Day at the Park

After yesterday’s crazy long and whiny post, I believe I owe you some brevity and cheer. So, in no particular order, here it is, short and sweet.

***

Last summer I watched The Starter Wife (the miniseries) after the regular TV season was over. This summer, I’m choosing more wisely and going with Arrested Development. I’ve watched the first three episodes, and I’m happy to say I’m hooked.

***

Annalyn has had a fever, off and on, for the past three days. I ended up staying home with her yesterday afternoon, and aside from the crying jags and burning forehead, she was perfectly adorable. She’s starting to speak in two-word sentences, and they’re just so sweet: “Bye-bye, Daddy.” “Thank you, Mommy.”

***

Staying home with Annalyn reminded me of the dilemma that is daytime television, in particular, the 3:00 hour. How can one possibly choose between Ellen and What I Like About You?

***

I went to the grocery store to buy some chicken. My whole purpose for going out, to the store, was to get a bag of chicken. I came home with pudding, refried beans, bananas and bagels, making this the second week in a row that I won’t be able to participate in Jessie’s Friday Family Recipes carnival. Because I need chicken for my recipe. And I want to take pictures.

This blogging life is so complicated.

***

I forgot to include in yesterday's post (the one I should have named, "The weekend was long. This post is longer.") that we went to the park on Sunday afternoon and had a great time. Of course, you know by "had a great time," I mean that I got some great pictures. So now, because you’ve been so kind to read this random rambling mess, I present to you pictures from last weekend:

A long post about my long weekend.

Three-day weekends can be tricky.

They don’t come around often, so when one arrives, we’re determined to make the most of them. To live life to the fullest. To participate in every activity with the inane hope of getting caught up on rest at the same time. There are parties to attend, children to entertain, expectations to manage and weather to work around.

Or is that just my family?

My long weekend started out great. As promised, I finished Annalyn’s first-year scrapbook. It’s not perfect, but I sure do love it. It’s 30 pages, front and back, of cuteness – and I even got the whole thing extended and posted and screwed together (thank you, Mark). Granted, I did buy the wrong size page protectors for the last 10 pages, but I did not let that stop me. Nope, I just let that project illustrate my dedication to giving up on perfect.

And Mark and my mom thought it was great anyway.

On Saturday, we had quite a schedule lined up. And we started with a bang, thanks to a less-than-full night’s sleep. I’m not sure what was up with Annalyn, but she didn’t sleep well all weekend.

For those of you not ruled by naps, let me explain what that means for our tightly scheduled Saturday. First, she slept late (9 a.m.), which was awesome. It meant that Mark and I got to sleep later, making up (kind of) for the hours we were up with her during the night. However, that meant Annalyn’s morning nap came much later than normal. And as a matter of fact, she sat in her crib fussing for an HOUR before FINALLY falling asleep. By that time, we were close to running late, so her nap got cut short, and we hit the road to a birthday party.

Because there's no better plan than to start an afternoon and evening with a tired kid.

The good news is that the chicken nuggets I nuked in our microwave took on magical characteristics just by being in the car. Annalyn gobbled them up like they came from the golden arches, something she hasn’t been interested in doing while sitting at the dining room table.

After the birthday party, we split up. Mark and my dad went to watch Angels and Demons. Mom, Annalyn and I headed to a kids’ music festival. Annalyn loves her CD and DVD by They Might Be Giants, and they were performing. Perfect, right?

Uh, no. As we sat, sweating, waiting for the band to set up, I’m pretty sure my mom was wondering why on earth I thought this was a good idea. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to take a wiggly, squirming toddler who doesn’t toddle and make her stay within a 3-foot radius of our seats?

The highlight of the evening is a toss-up. I’m not sure what Annalyn enjoyed more: dumping half a bottle of water on her head and mine, cleaning the cement floor with a used baby wipe, ignoring the Grammy Award-winning band playing in front of her, or dancing her little heart out IN THE CAR ON THE WAY HOME.

As we like to say in my family, a good time was had by all.

Sunday was actually a day of rest, if you don’t count the torturous delightful hour and a half I spent in the church nursery. Sweating. Wiping noses with toilet paper, because apparently we can’t keep Kleenex in stock. And holding a darling little girl who cried for 40 MINUTES STRAIGHT.

And oh yeah, telling Annalyn to suck it up, because she needs to share Mommy. Yes, I’m your Mommy. No, Mommy can’t hold you. Mommy loves you. Eat your Goldfish.

And then there was a nap involved. For everyone.

No stress on Sunday night, because Monday was a day OFF. A FREE DAY! A day to do nothing! Or everything! Or . . .

My idea was to go to the zoo. But Mark watched The Weather Channel (because that’s what you do when you get old), and rain was a-coming. Instead we headed to The Legends, an outdoor shopping center about half an hour away. After spending that 30-minute drive arguing debating where we should eat lunch, Mark remembered that a new Mexican restaurant had just opened.

And since Mexican restaurant = chips and salsa = happy baby, it was an easy decision.

By the time we got there, it was after 1 p.m., so I was surprised to see several families waiting in the lobby. But our wait was just long enough for me to change a verrry dirty diaper in the restroom (where Annalyn freaked out on the changing table, apparently afraid she was going to fall off. I don’t know. This has never happened before. It was fun.), and then we were seated.

And we waited. And waited. And waited. Not patiently, either. Because it was way past Annalyn’s lunchtime. And there were no chips on our table. (And, oh yeah, she’s recently decided that she hates sitting in high chairs.)

To make a long story slightly shorter, we got up to leave, told the manager why, got promised a speedy and FREE lunch, sat back down, ate a decent lunch that still took way too long, and finally left.

We walked down to the water fountains, where a band was performing. After letting Annalyn cruise around the fountains and listening to a pretty good cover of Bohemian Rhapsody, I suggested we visit Carter’s, my very favorite baby clothing store. (Affordable + not-bad quality = happy mom) Unfortunately, it was starting to spit at that point, and since we have been caught in the rain at The Legends before, I let Mark convince me that a better option was to head over to Cabela’s.

Because what says Mom’s Got a Day Off better than many large stuffed wild animals?

In an attempt to redeem this less-than-perfect day, Mark decided we would go to a Chevy dealership and test-drive a Traverse. Our area dealers are participating in Mommy Madness, a blogger promotion in which you can test-drive a Traverse and get a gift certificate for a massage in return, so this sounded like a good plan. Even though at least two of us were realllly tired and ready to go home at this point.

But, in the spirit of the weekend, it was not to be. We walked around the lot (in the drizzling spit rain), checking out several Traverses. We even walked up to the door of the office and tried to walk in.

Only to find it locked. At ten till five.

Because in today’s economic climate, car salesmen really have too many customers to worry about the ones literally trying to WALK IN THE DOOR.

After glaring at the salesman sitting just inside that LOCKED DOOR, we got back in the car and went home.

It was quite a weekend. We also rented Valkyrie, caught up on The Office, ate pizza more than once, bought a video camera and had lots of family snuggle time. So overall? Not too shabby.

How was your long weekend?