weekend hodgepodge.

Do you ever have those days where it just seems like time slips away from you and you just can't get anything done? Or on the flip-side, days where time is on your side and you're super-productive?

I think I've had both in the past few days.

Lola in the morning. You can't tell here, but she has her arms up in the air..

However, my favorites are the ones that are the perfect mix of productiveness and lazy. The ones where you sleep in 'til noon and still get everything checked off your to-do list. The ones where you can watch an entire movie, then cook dinner and still get your coupons cut and the kitchen clean. Which was kind of how my today was.

I slept in... then got up to go to spin class at 11. Unfortunately, it was full when I got there (dang New Year's resolutionists taking up my class!) but I still got a ton of stuff done today! Grocery, then home to dust, mop, vacuum, scrub around the toilets (boys are messy), organize stuff, finish dishes and do ALL of the laundry. 5 hours later and my house is sparkling! :D

We even washed the dogs.

This time they got their baths simultaneously in our tub as opposed to individual baths in the kitchen sink. I think they liked it! Maybe next time I'll turn on the jets for them! ;)

Our weekend was kind of a perfect mix too. It was filled with lots of friends and family in the form of two surprise parties! SO FUN!

First we celebrated my mom's boyfriend Mark's 50th birthday! I think he had a little inkling that we were up to something, so I don't know if he was throughly surprised but I don't think he knew what and I think he still had a great time!

Then we were off to our friend Pat's surprise party! He was definitely surprised!! Especially considering his birthday was actually in the middle of December ;) (ooops no pictures! Too busy socializing and having a good time! :)) Always fun to have a bunch of friends in one place. I think it's good for my soul. That party ended with a little bit of drama... we thought one of our friend's cars got stolen!!! Turns out it was just towed because a neighbor called it in as abandoned... what the heck?? Never a dull moment! And if you knew this guy, it's kind of one of those this type of thing would happen to you things.

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I've been back on twitter lately so I've been using my phone to take pictures more often. And then I forgot to do anything with them. Except post them on twitter. So, I'm gonna try to change that in the form of a weekly or bi-weekly phone photo dump. I've done it before, but I'm going to attempt to be more regular at it. 'Cause some of these pictures are fun. They're usually little moments that would otherwise be lost forever.. and some of them I haven't even blogged about... like that 3rd picture in the 1st row -- Josh's ER trip back in December. He had hives all over his body that only came at night and then went away during the day but got progressively worse each night until about the 3rd night when he couldn't take it anymore. So weird.

Anyway, we'll see how long I keep this up, cause my class starts today... I'm only taking one, but it's Physics, soooo it might kill me. We'll see. Wish me luck!

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OH! I got a crock pot!! So I can cross #24 off my list!

The first recipe I made was creamy crock pot chicken. I used a recipe similar to this. It was okay, but I didn't really have the right spices so it could have been better. My aunt gave me a sorta similar recipe for a delicious chicken casserole that she makes, so I'm going to kinda combine the two and see what happens.

(The holidays threw me off but I'm trying to eat more paleo-ish again. Creamy crock pot chicken is not paleo-friendly, but my make-shift recipe is, so if it turns out good I'll share!)

So I think that about wraps it up.

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!!