The Weekend Wrap-up

What a weekend!

Friday I spent the biggest part of the day baking monster cookies … not only are they huge cookies, but the recipe makes 10+ dozen!    It takes a good while to mix them and then bake them.  But they’re good, so it’s worth it.  DD asked me to make a batch to bring to our “send-off” party for T#1 that evening.  All the grandparents were there with Daddy, T#2, T#3 and T#4 when Mama and T#1 returned from running errands … he was surprised!

We drove up to DeKalb Saturday morning … the plan was to get checked in, go grab some dinner and then get to bed good and early.  My sister lived in DeKalb for 4-5 years in the early 80’s, and then she moved to a small town to the west where she lived for 10-15 years.  So I traveled I-55 to I-39 many a time in years gone by.  But boy have things changed!  We must have seen several hundred wind turbines along the way!

As usual, you can get a better look if you click on the picture … but better is a relative term here since I was using my iPhone in a car moving at 67-68mph and this was the view out the driver’s side of the car (I was the passenger).  See the white stuff along the ground?  That’s snow … something we haven’t seen here in a month now.  Here’s a better shot of the snow.


DH and I got there first so we got settled in and waited for the rest of the crew to arrive.  DD and I were texting back and forth, and they were further behind than I would have thought … DD said that it took longer than expected for lunch because the place where they stopped was packed.  Even so they weren’t gaining any ground (DSIL drives a little faster than DH so we thought they’d make up some of the time they lost).  We heard what sounded like a knock on the door … I thought sure it was them, so I ran to the door … no one there.  A few minutes later DD texted asking if someone knocked at our door … I replied that someone had but no one was there and wanted to know why she was asking.  Her response was that she’d heard of that happening.  We continued to text.  It happened again.  According to DD they were about 5 minutes from the hotel.  A couple of minutes later, it happened a third time.  This time I asked if it was them … her reply was that they had just arrived and were checking in.  I’m sure that you all have long since figured out that it WAS them … I’ve always said that if you look up “gullible” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of me.    I told DD that why shouldn’t a mama be able to believe what her daughter tells her?  ha!

We discovered a new place for sandwiches … even better, we think, than our old favorite Firehouse Subs.  Potbelly Sandwiches.  Oh my, the Italian is simply wonderful!  And DH was wild about his meatball sandwich.  It’s so good we stopped on the way home on Sunday for lunch at Potbelly in Bloomington.  And hooray!  And there’s a Potbelly in St. Louis … not all that far from where I’ll be taking that paper piecing class on Tuesday afternoon.  Gee, I wonder where I should have lunch that day? 

Sunday morning, T#1 and his entourage (Mama, Daddy and T#2) headed to the Y for warm-ups at 7:00 … his groupies (Nana and Papa) got there at about 9:00.  We had a couple of hours to wait for his event (100 yd butterfly), but that gave us time to find some good seats close to the pool … prime video territory. 

If you click on the picture, you’ll get a better shot … T#1 is in the far lane.  He finished 3rd in his heat, but he wasn’t able to advance to the finals.    Still this Nana was so proud of him … to advance to the state competition after just one year of competitive swimming.  I can’t wait to see what he does next season!  T#2, too!

Because he was done swimming (he qualified for only the one event (he and T#2 both had qualifying times in their relay events, but because they were swimming on the B teams, they weren’t eligible to go to state for those events … only 1 team can go, and it’s the A teams), we headed back home.  As mentioned above, we took a bit of a detour and stopped in Bloomington for lunch at Potbelly. 

The last 90 minutes we encountered a lot of rain, much of it mixed with snow and even some sleet.  Thankfully the temperature stayed just (barely) above freezing so the temperatures and the traffic kept the roads from being treacherous.   Whew!

We got home by about 4:30, so that meant that we had plenty of time to unpack, throw the dirty clothes in the washing machine, and just take it easy before an early bedtime.  It was a busy but fantastic weekend!