A Week Alfesco

Cora's going to tell you all about her day in the next post, but blogger ate half of it, so instead you're hearing about our week. Which was excellent!

Monday was Monday, but it was a perfectly acceptable Monday at that.

Tuesday was art show day and that was great fun.

On Wednesday Legally Fabulous came over to hang out with the kids and eat dinner outside and that was even more fun. Cora gave her lots of smiles while we drank Mexican martinis and watched the big kids play on the swing set and talked about public sector law jobs, baby names, and her sometimes funny and frequently terribly depressing public defender stories. She is one of my favorite people and I hope her plans to one day move to Texas come to fruition.

On Thursday I used some credit hours to cut out early and run errands. Very productive and necessary errands like buying Cora a tiny bunny t-shirt to wear after church on Easter. As I keep telling JP, if this is my last baby, I get to buy All The Things for every holiday because I'll never again get to put a tiny bunny headband on a tiny fuzzy head on Easter. (The bunny headband is in the mail from a etsy shop.) I picked the kids up super early at 3 and they played outside for hours while I sat with Cora.

Dinner was a challenge- I'd planned to make flatbread pizzas, but found that we didn't have any tomato sauce or mozzarella cheese or much of anything else. We did have some salsa leftover from the Tex Mex night we'd had with Legally Fab, some moneterrey jack cheese, a can of refried black beans, and two avocados. And from that I created flatbread Mexipizzas! (One with salsa verde, black olives, and monterrey jack cheese; the other with red salsa, thin layer of refried black beans, olives, and a mexican cheese blend, topped after baking with sliced avocado.) And they were SO good. That's becoming a regular recipe in the Lag Liv household.

Friday we had friends over with their two kids- 3 years and 9 months, and there was more sitting outside and talking and drinking and watching kids play and babies smile. I made a Greek pasta salad with grilled chicken, pitas, hummus, and tzatziki sauce on the side. With our friend's white wine and beer and JP's leftover swim school anniversary cookies, it was quite an excellent meal and the weather and children couldn't have been better.  Cora wore her party onesie and felt very festive.

Yesterday dawned all rosy and lazy, so I spread an old blanket on the family room floor and let the kids watch 3 episodes of Wild Kratts while JP slept late and Cora rolled around and played among us.

As always, the kids centered their play around Cora, who was, as always, delighted to be included.

The blanket became a central part of our whole day and this morning both kids immediately asked if we could "spread the blanket" again.

But the highlight of the day was the surprise date night I planned for JP. I made a reservation at our very favorite fancy Fort Worth restaurant- the one he surprised me with a date night to when Cora was a few weeks old and we ate the best meal of my life in fancy clothes and blown out hair. I'm not even sure it was actually the best meal of my life, but it was damn good and the fancy adult nature of it all after 6 weeks at home with a newborn elevated the evening to a whole other level. Ever since, any time we talk about going out to eat, JP always jokes, "Ooh, at Grace?!" and I roll my eyes because no, it's all Tex Mex happy hours for us, but last night I got to say "Yes! The babysitter will be here at 7." and it was awesome. To keep up with tradition, I blow dried my hair for the occasion, the first time I'd done that in many a week.

We were celebrating the one year anniversary of starting the swim school and the great success and enormous amount of work he's put in to make that success. I'm so proud of him. He has 115 kids signed up this session alone and his name is bandied about in glowing terms on any FW mom message board.  It's been a lot of work by both of us, but as I wrote here, it's created a life that works well for us and I couldn't be more proud of where he is, and where we are, right now. And so we celebrated with the eating of fried oysters, the greatest salad ever made, filet mignons with Bearnaise, and butterscotch pudding desserts we had to order two of because we wouldn't share. Oh and a great bottle of Bordeaux because that's JP's favorite wine and he hasn't had it since he was in France before we got married because Bordeauxs aren't produced in the Yellow Tail price bracket. We told the waiter we were celebrating an anniversary, which I now realize he probably thought meant wedding anniversary, but I phrased it as "his one year anniversary," meaning JP's for his business, but JP dislocated two fingers at krav maga a few weeks ago and they're still too swollen to wear his wedding ring, so I was the only one wearing one, which probably made for a lot of confusing signals. But no matter, it was a lovely, lovely time.

And now we're all off to Target in the rain because we love adventure. Next week is going to be pretty routine and then it's pretty dress and bunny headband time! I can't wait.