Oh Mama

I had a super long weekend.

Friday, after I got the kids to school and did a couple of little chores, I went down to Chesapeake to have lunch with KT and Jess. We ate on the restaurant's porch, which overlooked one of the gazillion little waterways in Norfolk that they use to keep the river delta from flooding the roads, and there were about two dozen or so turtles in the water. Which served to captivate Jess so KT and I could actually talk. Though we were nearly as distracted by the wildlife as Jess was. There were a pair of geese with two fuzzy goslings, and a pretty black bird with red spots on his wings, and even a white heron for a little bit.

After we ate, we went shoe shopping, and I wound up buying three pairs of shoes. Which is actually kind of good, because I don't have any sandals for the summer. Well, I didn't. I do now -- two heeled/dressy pairs for work and Events, and one ugly-but-comfortable pair for the weekends.

Then I stopped at Target on my way home and picked up a couple of short-sleeved cardigans (an excellent way to make my assortment of tank-tops into a viable alternative for work) and a shirt and a skirt that were on clearance.

And then I got home to find that Matt had sent me flowers for Mother's Day. What a sweetie!

Saturday I got up early and met Vicki and her friend Anne at the Williamsburg Farmers' Market. Vicki and I wandered around for the better part of an hour, taking pictures of all the flowers and things.

Vicki had found a cool hack for taking macro (extreme close-up) pictures without a macro lens, so we played with that, and both of us got some cool shots. (It's not the easiest setup, and if you're not careful, it can actually be bad for both the lens and the camera body, but it's a nice way to see how interested you are in macro photography without having to invest in a macro lens right off.)

I took this with my regular old standard kit lens.
I messed with contrast and such in post-processing, but did not crop it at all.

After we'd finished taking pictures and buying tasty treats to take home (I got some bread and two quarts of fresh strawberries) the three of us went to the Blue Talon for breakfast, which was a lovely treat.

That evening, Jennie and Brian and Braz came over, and we ordered out Thai for dinner, and once the kids were in bed, we gamed.

Sunday morning, being Mother's Day, Matt got up with the kids, and they "woke" me (I'd been awake for fifteen minutes or so, and even if I hadn't, Alex made lots of noise coming up the stairs) at 9:00 with breakfast in bed: waffles (well, Eggos) with sliced fresh strawberries and syrup, and coffee, and a banana. How awesome is Matt? Not only did he make coffee for me, even though he hates even the smell of the stuff, but he also added the banana to the menu at the last minute in order to give Alex something relatively low-risk to carry up the stairs for me.

Everyone sat on the bed with me while I ate, and then followed me downstairs to open my presents -- Penny drew me some lovely pictures and a card, and had made me a necklace and bracelet out of clover, which was both clever and adorably sweet. (I wore it for a bit, but the flowers were starting to dry and were scratchy and brittle, so it didn't last long.) Matt gave me the Order of the Stick pre-prequel and a gorgeous multi-rope turquoise necklace.

After Alex's nap, we went down to John and Sam's for dinner. We gave my mom a framed set of pictures of the kids, and some roses that Penny had picked out, and a silly card that I'd picked out. The card had to do with nuts not falling far from the tree, which is relevant because -- hysterically and entirely without planning -- my brother had got her the exact same card! I'm still giggling about that one.

Dinner was awesome -- grilled chicken and pineapple with fruit salad, and raspberry cake for dessert. And Matt took on the bulk of chasing the kids around so I could take pictures and talk to my family, which was great.

So, all in all, extremely awesome weekend. Lots of relaxing and fun stuff, lots of friends, lots of family, lots of good food.

I'm so not ready to be back at work today. But tomorrow is Penny's class "Superhero" play, and then Thursday is the Jonathan Coulton concert, so there's plenty to look forward to.