weekend highs and lows

There’s this dichotomy I live in: relaxing weekend means depressing Monday (I didn’t even get anything done and it’s time to go back to work already!), productive weekend means exhausted Monday (I need a weekend after that weekend). Today is an exhausted Monday.

Friday night we had Dan’s whole family over (5 + us) for dinner, so before that (but after meeting some friends for happy hour appetizers), we ran, panicked, around our house cleaning it top to bottom. For your in-laws?! you say? Heavens no. We’ll get to that.

Saturday morning we did a full blown Costco shopping extravaganza, 24 hot dogs and buns, 3 lbs of mandarin oranges, 5 lbs of frozen beef, 2 gallons of milk, 6 pack of frozen OJ concentrate, and last but not least, a 4 lb pork roast. Shortly after returning home, the troops arrived (this will answer that whole what army was she feeding? question you just had).

The background: Dan’s cousin, J, is a car fixing guru. We happen to have a car that needs fixing. We offered to feed and house J and his wife C for a weekend in exchange for exploiting J’s mad car skills on our still-imobile Volvo. A deal was struck, a date was set. Then, turns out that the date we set was the same weekend that J and C were going to have visitors of their own – more cousins, N and S. So we opened our doors and our fridge to the whole group (count ‘em that’s 4). But wait! There’s more! Cousin N has a friend who lives in the area, and since N is from out of town, this friend hung out with us for the day, making it a party of 7. That 4 lb pot roast making sense right about now?

Saturday was fabulously full and productive. J the Guru and D the Hubs spent 7 hours nursing the car back to health. Wait for it… wait for it… THEY FIXED IT! We now have TWO RUNNING VEHICLES (jumping up and down here is appropriate)! Dan came through in the end on his of-course-we-can-fix-the-very-mangled-car-ourselves,-hunny campaign promise. I stand corrected.

While the car dun got fixed, the non-car fixing party of 5 (C,S,N, N’s friend, and A¬† – if you were keeping track) spent the day walking around the Minneapolis Institute of Art. It was really wonderful. We met back with the boys for dinner at our house (enter pork roast, stage left), then played some games and hung out until11:30 something, when a late night Sonic trip was made, naturally.

Sunday we did church (early service = bad idea after late night), lunch (biggest pot of chili I’ve ever seen consumed in one sitting), and TOOK NAPS. Apparently I wasn’t the only one completely exhausted. Sunday evening was spent at the in-laws visiting with family. Finally, with my eyes already closed, my head hit the pillow at 10pm.

Weekend high: 20 degrees, and it’s a tie between seeing J and C, and hearing our car start up again, 3 months later

Weekend low: -4 degrees, and having to wake up from that Sunday afternoon nap