A glorious weekend without plane rides

This weekend we spent the whole weekend at home. Thank god. I am exhausted from traveling.

I don't think I've even said much about our traveling lately because we've been so busy traveling. We had a fantastic time in Cape Cod with our friends Bill & Claire. A whole week without work? Amazing! Claire is seven+ months pregnant, but still incredibly adventurous. If I'm ever pregnant, I hope I rock it out like her. I totally admire her for that. So our week was full of swimming, hiking, kayaking, mini-golfing, and lots of other fun activities. If anyone's looking to rent a cottage in Cape Cod, ours was a great one and a great deal.

Rob got to go home after our vacation, but I jetted off in another direction for work. Then this past weekend we headed back to the East coast for a mini-bachelorette party for Rob's sister Gena and my friend Erica's baby shower. (Yup, everybody's pregnant or engaged these days!) Mark & Chris let us crash at their pad despite the fact we didn't really have any free time. But we had a great, if exhausting weekend nonetheless. Although, mental note: two early morning flights in 48 hours is not ideal for a post-30-year-old body. Ugh.

Of course, I turned right back around for another work trip on Tuesday. So this past Friday night, Rob and I went to bed at 9pm. Seriously. We slept a solid 12 hours before even stirring.

This weekend has been the first stop on our "get more organized" tour. And also our "Oh, I forgot this is what our house/neighborhood/city looked like because I haven't seen it in so damn long" tour. We did some serious appliance shopping because we are at our collective wit's end with our dishwasher (the world's loudest) and our fridge (whose ice machine component thinks it is in a noise-making competition with the dishwasher).

So this weekend I learned that I'm not a fan of the new style of dishwasher that you have to open to see where it is in the cycle. That doesn't make sense to me. Seems like a steam-burning product liability lawsuit waiting to happen, right?

Fortunately, we found a cool new dishwasher without that issue. In fact, we found a whole set of new appliances - fridge, dishwasher, range, and microwave - at a pretty sweet price with an even sweeter financing deal. So next Saturday, our kitchen will be gleamed out in stainless steel. It'll be strange not having random things hanging all over the front of our fridge. (If you've ever seen our fridge, you understand my obsession. Where will I put Rob's awesome quotes?) But I cannot wait to have a modern kitchen with a stove top so cool I might actually consider cooking more than once a year. Whoo hoo!

I also went through about eight bags and boxes full of papers needing to be filed or tossed that currently occupy our office. Only about eight more to go. But I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of ridding our home of boxes of unidentified junk.

Last but not least, we got to spend some quality time this weekend with friends who we've missed a lot lately. Sara and I saw the Traveling Pants 2 movie. Totally cute. Allison, Geoff and Rob & I split up our Blackhawks season tickets over some awesome sushi. Ali and Eddie were finally in town on a weekend that Rob and I were in town, so we saw them twice! Rob caught a Cubs game with Jeff, Sara and Eddie. Our friends Sophia and Fritz were in town for a wedding, so the Penn Law Wives Club - DC Chapter (aka Rob, Eddie & Fritz -- long story) was reunited. We even got to see my mom briefly on Friday for a Chicago family dinner on the town as she cut through Chicago to go to a wedding in Indy with Resa & Nick.

Man, it was good to be home for a weekend. Even better to have three days of weekend. I'm so glad I have all of next weekend in Chi-town to look forward to as well.