It was a delightful weekend full of:

 A steak dinner with a good friend
 A surprise visit from Robert and C
 A trip to the mountains for the night
 A stop at this gorgeous lookout point to check out the fields of wildflowers and mountain valley
 A coffee chat that warmed the soul with a beautiful friend of mine from home
 A movie and dinner with Jimmy

A delightful weekend indeed!

Jimmy was away a couple weekends ago on the boy's golf trip and this gave me the perfect opportunity to relax and putter and around the house. I spend the majority of yesterday starting to pull together our backyard. One of the things I love about having a house, is the opportunity for backyard summer living. And although Calgary isn't known for the greatest of summers, the thought of enjoying a warm night outside makes it all worth it!

So I busily planted and fertilized, turned the soil and weeded. I hung lights and clocks. Pruned bushes and checked out my blooming iris. I smelled lilies of the valley and looked for the perfect spot for my peony. A peony - So excited about the peony that I bought on Friday! I guess I really am a married woman now if I get excited about a peony.

The only thing that we have left is to get a dining table and chairs and work a little more on the lighting situation. So stay tuned for a couple of pictures of where everything is at.

A day in the life of a travelling gypsy

Okay - I am not a gypsy but here is how my travels went today:

• 3:30 am the alarm rings
• After a couple stretches I am up, packing the last minute things
• On the drive to the airport, I realize that I forgot to book a rental car on the other end
• 4:45 Jimmy is dropping me off at the door
• 5:30 I have a latte in hand as I wait for the flight to board
• I catch an hour of restless sleep on the plane before pulling up the shade a bit and enjoy another coffee with my fruit cup
• 9:00 I finally land in Phoenix and spend the next 45 minutes trying to figure out how to catch my connecting flight
• First there is no board that shows connecting flights in the US terminal
• Secondly I cannot find this door 22 that is supposed to magically whisk me to terminal 4
• Thirdly any time I ask someone about door 22 they vaguely point in a general area and tell me to follow it there
• I didn't dare take time for a facility break as I was set to be boarding in 40 minutes and counting
• Finally I make it to the terminal and get through security (without a beep) to the nearest washroom
• I had to finish my litre bottle of water on the connecting shuttle after all as I didn't realize that I would need to clear security for a second time in Phoenix
• I was entertained by the vast variety of individuals that I would be travelling to Houston with

• Oh yes - you are looking at acid washed tie dyed jeans - I didn't think that was possible; and he is sporting a 6" handlebar moustache on top of his goatee beard! (forgive the blurriness - I was trying to take this in stealth mode)
• The flight to Houston was fairly uneventful - just colder than I would have liked - darn AC
• I pick up my luggage at Houston only to see an interesting sticker on my bag

• You are reading correctly, that does say Status: Suspect . . . really?? What does that mean?
• 4:30 pm Calgary time I am all checked in
• Now after a delicious Mexican meal I am ready for bed!
• Whew - that was was a crazy 13 hour plus travel day

Underground dinner clubs

Did anyone happen to click on the link for Are You Gonna Eat That on the side of my blog page? Underground dinner clubs? Really?? Too fun!

First of all - we must go and try one out when we come to visit David and Matthew in Vancouver? And secondly - does anyone know of these same sort of clubs in Calgary? Please tell me yes!!!

Jimmy made dinner the other night. He rummaged around in the freezer and came up with ground pork and sausage meat. I had bought both to make burgers - these delicious pork satay burgers that we both quite like and the sausage meat was to mix with beef for a variation on regular beef burgers.

I had tried this a few months ago when using up this sausage meat that one of Jimmy's friends had bought and Jimmy exclaimed how much he liked it. Making dinner is totally worth it when my loved ones exclaim over how good things are and so even though sausage meat is not my favorite thing I am willing to make the odd thing I do not love for my handsome husband (that is of course fully dependant on the fact that he continues to do things like mowing the lawn or shovelling snow!!) and his dinner enjoyment!

Despite his best efforts with cheese and creams and other such additions, the pork and sausage goulash did not quite cut it. The potatoes more than made up for what the goulash was lacking and sour cream did help cut the taste of sausage and pork a bit but I still couldn't eat much of it. Eventually Jimmy, who also wasn't loving his meal, speaks up and states that he doesn't really care for the sausage meat. I bust out laughing - phew - I admitted I didn't either but had merely bought it for those burgers that he was exclaiming over. 

We proceeded to polish off the potatoes, through the rest of the meat mixture out and walk to dairy queen for blizzards!!

Glad we didn't spend years buying and eating sausage meat, both pretending that we love it, before finding out this little fact. I wonder what else Jimmy is pretending to love . . . I am sure time will tell!

Update: I forgot to mention in the original version that Jimmy said the only reason he pulled it out of the freezer was because he thought that the sausage meat was one of my favorites! Mercies . . . hee hee