If Michael Jackson’s Free Willy song comes on while your driving home on Friday, it just has to be a good weekend.  And just knowing I had a bestie dinner date, the KBCO Studio C Vol. 27 release, breakfast with my mom, the Denver Holiday Flea and Christmas tree decorating to look forward to made it very difficult to make it through an entire day of work on Friday!

We met Hannah and Josh at Fat Sully’s newest location on Tennyson for Friday night dinner.  We had to introduce them to the 26″ pizza, obviously.  Those slices are SO HUGE and I swear it took me two hours just to eat one.  Also, we all reminisced about when we used to live together.  Ah, those were the good old days!

Saturday started at 5:45 AM (NO!) when we picked my mom and Wayne up for the annual KBCO Studio C CD release.  Standing in line and making friends (or enemies if someone tries to cut you in line…) is half the fun of this tradition, but this year we decided to get breakfast first, THEN get in line.  Less waiting, less hangry Lauren.  Win, win.  Joey snapped this lovely photo of my mom and I.

This was Wayne’s first time experiencing the tradition and it was so fun to have a first-timer to tell all our past Studio C stories to.  “And then there was the year it so cold and a kid was tunneling himself into the snow?!”  For the record, Vol. 27 is so so good and even has Kaleo on it!  Also, I put both my hands out to receive my CDs at the register and the Whole Foods employee exclaimed “AWW, your hands are so cute!”  I can’t stop laughing about that.

Afterwards, we roped my mom and Wayne into picking out a Christmas tree with us.  We’ve always had a fake one because we thought Joey was really allergic but we threw it away last year, so we figured it was a good opportunity to test the allergy theory.  Joey was so excited to find “the perfect tree!” that he couldn’t even keep his eyes open.  That or I’m a bad picture-taker…  Mom picked one out too and it turned out to be just her height!  Meant to be, obviously.

I felt like I really needed to capture Joey’s first tree memories, including that part where he was on the floor underneath it trying to get the stand to work correctly.  We only ever had a real tree when I was younger and I forgot just how good they smell.  I get excited every time I walk into our house!  And considering Joey was all up in this tree without any allergy issues, I think we’re good to go!

A few hours and some napping (early wake up call, remember?!) later, we cleaned up and took ourselves to the Holiday Flea!  I had been looking forward to it for a month but go figure that when the time came to actually go I wasn’t feeling that into it.  I think it probably had something to do with being tired and having to get out of my sweats, but you know what?  We LOVED it!!!  Picture every Denver artisan in one big warehouse + music, booze and food trucks!

I wasn’t sure we were actually going to buy anything, but we ended up with so much fun stuff and were totally shocked that it was all reasonably priced.  I think Joey was most excited about this Ginger Beer concentrate that was so delicious and it going to make for the most excellent Moscow Mules and I’m most excited about this $2 magnet that just gets me, ya know?  Plus we got lots of Christmas shopping done and I’m like “I have to wait 18 more days to give these presents?!”  So fleaking fun!

Sunday was all about coffee (I picked up some more Huckleberry coffee beans, had them in my car for about 2 minutes and now it smells sooo good in there!), breakfast that included homemade coconut butter (serious yum), “Christmas at Bobby’s” on Food Network, outdoor running, finishing up our “exterior illumination,” broccoli cheddar soup and decorating the Christmas tree.  We played Christmas Vacation in the background and drank Brandy Milk Punch and my heart was happy.

How was your weekend??