A Nice Little Weekend

So! After reconsidering all my life choices, I settled right back into the routine- work, barre, dinner, friends, kids, James, reading, a tiny bit of sleeping, work, etc. I realized that not only was 5 years a milestone that gave me cause for reflection, it's also just the longest I've ever done anything except for competitive swimming, marriage, and being a parent. College 3.5 years. Law school 3 years. Big law 3.5 years. SEC 5 years. Same with locale- Austin 3.5 years, Chicago 3 years, Austin 3.5 years, Fort Worth 5 years. It's good to reflect, reconsider, and re-commit (or not), and it certainly makes for some interesting thought trails and conversations along the way. Thank you, truly, to those who lent their thoughts to mine.

Yesterday was the 4-year anniversary of the swim school. Another big milestone- after Big Oil, investment banking, getting his MBA, and working at Dell, James has never done anything for 4 years either. He celebrated with cookies at the pool for all his students, as he's done every year. Now that Cora is a student she also gets a cookie and she found this very pleasing.

We went out for a date night on Friday to celebrate. Also, we just needed a date night. Tara came over and we headed to Americado, a new restaurant that opened up close by. It has an odd set-up, we ended up having to order parts of our meal in 4 different places, but it was amazing and we will definitely be back.

As always, we ordered everything and I made James take a picture with me. He loves that.

But I had blow-dried my hair for the first time in maybe a month (at least) and I knew it needed to be documented. The girls were so shocked and delighted to see "all my hair" when it was time for us to go. I need to act like a grown up more often. It's just, after swimming and having wet hair my whole life, I find spending 15-20 minutes on it utterly unreasonable. And my likes living in a half-wet ball on my head. I'm sure of it.

The chilaquiles were my favorite, the enchiladas verdes were James's favorite, the guacamole and crispy salty house made chips were both our favorite, but the frozen cucumber margarita was a mountaintop moment.

I love frozen margaritas and actively dislike when they're on the rocks. If a restaurant doesn't have frozen margaritas I'll just order water and vow to stop at a bakery on the way home to eat lots of cookies to make up for my loss. But I also love cucumber margaritas. And they're always on the rocks. It's a Sophie's choice situation. But now, Americado has combined cucumber, tequila, and some Elsa Frozen magic to create a cucumber margarita that is perfection. It will be my drink of summer.

On Saturday we started with errands and exercising (the former for me, the latter for James; I wanted to keep my blow-dried hair for another day so I canceled my Orangetheory class, which seemed very logical at the time) and then Claire's soccer game. She's really loving the sport and is increasingly aware and responsive to whats happening all over the field instead of just her little part of it. It's fun to watch. Even if they still lose pretty much all of the time.

She's aggressive and I love it.

Cora was dressed for the occasion, of course and always.

Landon came to spectate as well.

And when Cora powered over to where we were seated, filled with the devastating news that her goldfish had been dropped from the bleachers,

it was Landon who rushed over to help. He makes me crazy on occasion, but when it comes to his sisters (and really, most other things), he's the best.

Even if watching soccer is sometimes still the worst.

James headed off to swim and I took the kids to lunch and then the TCU bookstore after the game.

We drive through the middle of TCU multiple times every day and yet I've still never actually been on campus. I need to fix that. But the bookstore worked for now. The kids found it delightful. Cora read up on the Moana story. She watched the movie on Friday night when the big kids had friends over and Cora was all alone. I sat on the couch with her and when Moana sails off to restore the heart of tafiti Cora turned to me and said "Don't worry mom, she is going to find her lost pig. She is going to *find him*."

So apparently Cora believes the whole of Moana is about Moana losing Pua and scouring the ocean for him. At the end, when Moana sails back up to the island and finds a happy Pua, Cora squealed, "See! She found him!" Happily ever after indeed.

The rest of the weekend involved a housewarming party for me, a birthday party for the family, an Easter egg hunt for Landon, and another birthday party for the fam. Good times all around, with triple servings of cake (just for me) and plenty of time for catching up on the sleep I missed when I read the latest JR Ward (The Chosen in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series; good, still annoyingly scattered, but good) and the latest Patricia Briggs (Silence Fallen in the Mercy Thompson series; loved it a surprising amount! felt fresh and new after several books that felt slow. that's my excuse for reading until 3:30 a.m. to finish it on a morning I was signed into a pre-work Orangetheory class).

Cora wore a different princess dress to every event and then spent most of one birthday party pretend talking on the phone.

Sorry not sorry you guys, she's a busy girl with a full week ahead.