Weekending it

We are truly loving this summer and making the most of every weekend by jam packing it with stuff.

On Friday, my birthday, I met-up with a friend to get pedicures.  When I got home Dan had decorated!!!

He pulled out all of our snuggle buddies too and even got a card that he signed for all of them.  We are not ashamed of our stuffed animal family.   

I had no expectations for wrapped presents or decorations.  He's a guy, let's be real.  But he surprised me with such sweet thoughtfulness. Thanks Buddy!!

He even queued-up a really awesome video on Youtube with the birthday song.  He even sent a link of it to Mandy.

I opened my presents from my parents, sisters, Dan, and lots and lots of birthday cards. 

Then we headed out for dinner.  In the summer the main street in our neighborhood does Summer Stroll on Friday nights when the street closes to traffic and all the restaurants have outdoor seating.  We walked the full length thinking about what to eat.  I decided, in my heart, I wanted fancy tacos so we walked past Summer Stroll and went to Ho'Brah.  Typically this place is super crowded and on a Friday night we expected a long wait to be seated.  My birthday luck came through and we got a table right away, no wait.  The couple that came in behind us were given a 30 minute wait.

After dinner we walked home and started watching Frontier House, which Mandy got me on DVD as a present.  We ended up getting each other the same thing.  We were both obsessed with this series in high school and owned it on VHS.

Since July, Dan and I have been waiting for a beach day.  Every available Saturday we've had was crummy weather.  I was starting to accept that we might not get a beach day.  Our original idea was to take a ferry to New Jersey to go to a private beach.  It cost $40 per person to ride the ferry which is an hour long ride.  That felt like too much of a commitment so on Friday night we investigated beach options in Staten Island.  Turns out there is a super nice beach only a short bus trip from our hood!  We got up at 8 on Saturday, packed our beach bag and walked to the bus.  Once the bus arrived, in less than 20 minutes we were at South Beach.  It was nearly empty. The sand and water were clean (mostly) and the weather was perfect.  Sunny with a cool breeze. 

The perfect part about this trip was it ended up being just the right amount of beach for us.  We only spent the cost of the bus fare, we weren't overwhelmed by crowds, and when we had our fill of sun after two hours on the beach we were back in our neighborhood in 10 minutes.  I'm never going to Coney Island beach again.  Oh, I'll go there for the hot dogs, just not the beach.

After a short rest we took the bikes out for a ride along the promenade.  Had homemade pizza for dinner and watched a movie.

This Sunday was much better than last Sunday.  For one, I resolved to have a better attitude and two I significantly lowered my expectations about how the craft camp would go.  Mandy always tells me that low expectations rarely produce disappointment.  This is true.  I gave the kids individual bags of Crayola model magic dough.  Everyone got the same colors and the same amount.  They were allowed to mix colors and do whatever they wanted.  Most of them mushed all the colors together to make a weird pinkish brown.  Normally I would have been annoyed that they wasted the dough like that but my expectations were low and they had fun.  So there.  Some of them got bored after awhile so pulled out the Magna Tiles and that kept them occupied.

Dan did well with the soccer portion of the camp thanks to the help of one of the teens.  

After church Dan and I had lunch out with a few people from church.  Normally I wouldn't have the energy for social engagement after running around at church but I pushed myself and we had a nice time visiting.

Dan and I were going to go to Best Buy and Target in the afternoon but we were spent so we just hung out.  Aunt Judy's birthday box arrived with presents for both me and Dan!  We played the game Dan got from her called Pandemic.  Really fun! Thanks Aunt Judy!!!

Now, on to Monday.