Roger's Birthday Weekend

What a weekend! I never powered through my “sickness” like I was hoping earlier in the week. By Thursday afternoon, I could barely function. Even though I went to work, I had serious doubts if I could even drive myself home…which is the only reason I didn’t leave early. Although I was feeling a little bit better by Friday morning, I decided to call in sick. I had been up pretty much all night and was just feeling so weak and tired to do much of anything.


Friday was also Roger’s birthday and luckily I started feeling much more energetic and alive by the afternoon. Vickie volunteered to babysit Kaelyn and Roger and I went out to dinner, by ourselves, for only the second time since Kaelyn was born. We had a nice evening, then took advantage of our child-free night to go pick out our Christmas tree.

We didn’t get home too late, but were both pretty exhausted, so we put Kaelyn to bed and hung out in our room watching tv and talking until we both feel asleep.

Saturday was pretty crazy. For Roger’s birthday, I threw him a poker party. He knew all about it, because there was no way I could have pulled this off by myself. But, not having any opportunity during the week to prepare, had a lot to do on Saturday. Roger picked the menu and on Saturday morning, asked me to make my world famous bbq sauce (takes at least 2 hours to fully reduce), chili (again, easy to prep, but takes a couple of hours to cook just right), and a whiskey apple glaze for pork tenderloins. I have never heard, much less made something like this. But, it was his birthday and I wanted to deliver. Roger knows that I love to cook, especially sauces, and I also love to experiment, but I don’t think he realizes that when I’m coming up with a new recipe it takes a really long time (sometimes months or years) to perfect. I wasn’t sure how I was going to make this glaze with everything else we had going on. But, I did manage to figure out how to make a good marinade and sauce. It wasn’t technically a glaze, but it was good. Roger liked it and that’s all that matters.

To make it more stressful, we decided that we would have the house decorated for Christmas before the party and we hadn’t even pulled the stuff out of the attic before Saturday morning. I don’t do much (a tree, the fireplace, some garland and wreaths), but it still takes a while to do. What’s worse, is that Roger got a service call and had to leave for a couple of hours, so I was by myself, trying to cook 4 or 5 dishes for the party, finish decorating, and watching Kae…who was being extra demanding of my attention (or so it seemed). I got a lot done during her nap, but was still pretty stressed out by the time Roger got back. He helped pull it all together and we had a great time at the party. After clean up, it was almost 2 am…we passed out on the couches upstairs…never even made it to bed.

I woke up early Sunday morning…thank you Kaelyn…and discovered that sometime in the few hours we were asleep, our tree had fallen over! I tried standing it back up and ended up underneath it. Roger saved me and our tree and once readjusted in the stand and redecorated, it was like it had never happened. After breakfast, Roger went to help our friend Lance install his new furnace, while Kaelyn and I went to help Klara move. The move was a lot more work than I was anticipating and Roger ended up coming over later and helping us get it all done (in the pouring rain)…again, we could not have pulled it off without him! It was after 8 when we got home and I still had to wrap the presents and get the Christmas packages ready for the mail. Thank goodness that’s all done.

This morning, I don’t feel like I had a weekend. I’m more exhausted now than when I was sick last week. I forgot Kaelyn’s diaper bag this morning, which after turning around to get it and driving to the sitter’s was much later than I wanted to be for work. Luckily, once I got here things started turning around and I’m thinking it’s going to be a great week!!