Weekend Things

Interrupting recaps of Italian Vacation 2019, to tell you I watched too many movies this weekend.  But, as Joey whispered to me while we were cozy in our seats at the Alamo Drafthouse on Friday night, “it’s movie season!”

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We saw Jojo Rabbit, a movie I had been highly anticipating, on Friday night and I don’t know how to tell you about it.  The entire time, I had this feeling that something was missing or amiss and just not totally working for me, so I was shocked to death afterward when Joey told me “that’s the best movie of the year!”  We maybe argued about it for way too long, but now that a few days have passed I’ve softened and feel like I was maybe too harsh in my criticism.  I still don’t think it’s a perfect movie, but I will say it’s funny and for real, I was so taken with Roman Griffin Davis, who plays Jojo and is seriously so adorable ♥

Back at home, we maybe started Jenny Slate’s comedy special Stage Fright and I didn’t think it was that funny, yet I keep quoting it?  What does this mean?

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Saturday started with pancakes for the first time in three weeks!!!  I should mention that after we got back from Italy, we were home for a literal day, then flew to Chicago for a wedding in Rockford, so this was our first real weekend home.  I hit the grocery and was reminded that all human beings are annoying and from here on out I will do whatever necessary to have my groceries delivered 😛

Back at home, Joey was cleaning up our yard, which was covered in leaves and the dead remains of our garden (all the shishitos had turned to ghost shishitos!).  I basically figured we had no chance of getting it all cleaned up, but then we did and I’m so glad!  I even found some carrots and beets that had managed to thrive even though we had completely neglected them.  Also, it was in the 70s and beautiful outside.

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I am nothing if not a committed movie viewer, so even though we weren’t stoked to see it, Oscar buzz for Renée Zellweger means we went to see Judy.  We were sort of disappointed that, though there are a few flashbacks to when she was filming Wizard of Oz, most of the film takes place near the end of her life.  I wanted to see it all!  She does her own singing and I don’t know that she really sounds like Judy Garland but you do still get that captivating effect.  Mostly, it was really sad knowing she would die so soon after the events of the film.

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Woke up to snow on Sunday (and it’s basically been snowing ever since…)!  My sister picked me up later so we could go get our nails done.  We go to the same nail salon, but not at the same time as often as we should.  She was telling me about a simulation lab she did in school and I’m so impressed and proud of that little nurse-to-be ♥  We went to Beet Box afterward so she could pick up some donuts for Wayne and I got myself a tofu banh mi (that was so good!) for lunch.

Back at home, Joey and I lazed around for basically the rest of the day.  Last Thursday, while he was at bowling, I decided to re-watch Ocean’s Eleven then quickly realized I had definitely never seen a single second of that movie.  So Sunday we watched Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen.  Thirteen is okay, but Twelve was a joke.  Why do we make sequels again?  Snow days calls for chili and cornbread, right?

What did you do this weekend??

Weekend Things

This post contains a LOT of wildflower pictures, so I’ll spare you an intro and just jump right in!

Feels like it’s been so long since we stayed home and did nothing on a Friday, so this one felt extra nice.  We stopped by the grocery store on the way home from work and look who I ran into!  Wayne sent Joey and I a picture of my sister doing this same pose last week, so it only felt right that I reciprocate.  We ate fajita leftovers in the backyard and would you look at how fruitful our shishito plants are?!  We are so amazed and happy about it!  Also, we’re on a Leo kick after seeing OUATIH and decided to re-watch Wolf of Wall Street, which we hadn’t seen since we saw it in theaters in 2014!  We only made it halfway, because it’s a billion hours long!

Saturday we were up and at em for a wildflower hike!  I’d been wanting to do this since last year when I came across an article about the best places to see Colorado wildflowers, except by the time I read it, wildflower season had already passed.  I wasn’t going to miss my chance this year!  I found an article that listed Black Powder Pass as a good spot, so we loaded ourselves and lunch into the car and drove up toward Breckenridge.  It was maybe cloudy and rainy the whole drive and for a moment, I thought we would just have to turn back around, but the rain stopped and we had the most glorious time!!!  These pictures do not do the flowers (or their INCREDIBLE fragrance!) justice.  I could hardly believe my eyes!

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Um we saw two moose!!!!!  We made it up to the final meadow and there they were on the other side of the valley.  I know they look really far away, but they felt a lot closer in real life!  I was part amazed and part terrified because, MOOSE ARE HUGE!  But apart from what felt like them staring right at us, they basically ignored us and went on their way.  And wow, what an epic view we had!  This trail was seriously so wonderful.  It was just the right length, just the right difficulty and except for a few groups we saw on our way back down, we had the whole thing to ourselves.  Plus, did I mention wildflowers and moose?!  Had a tailgate lunch back at the car and felt like my happiest self 🙂

Back at home, it was summer again!  My mom, dad and sister are out of town for a few days, so my sister dropped Huni off to watch while they’re gone.  The pups are such bad influences on each other!  But it has been highly entertaining to watch them compete with each other over everything and I can’t complain about double puppy cuddles 🙂  Joey did some more work on the slat wall while I read and relaxed for a bit inside.  We broke out the pasta maker for dinner!  Joey mentioned wanting to make spaghetti and meatballs months ago, so I’ve been keeping the idea in my back pocket.  It was our first time using the spaghetti attachment and even though we accidentally made a few ramen noodles, we got the hang of it and Joey declared this his favorite fresh pasta meal yet!

Also, we finished Wolf of Wall Street, and though it is a GREAT performance by Leo and there are many funny parts, why does this movie exist again??  It feels pretty much in service of the real Jordan Belmont (who literally has a cameo in the movie) and uh, this guy doesn’t deserve any service.

Sunday, Sunday!  We woke up and had waffles, then headed out to do some patio furniture shopping.  Word to the wise, maybe don’t wait this far into summer to START shopping for patio furniture.  At Home had slim pickings, Fruehauf’s was out of our budget and Home Depot was a major bust.  We were finally able to find what we wanted at Christy Sports but it was still a game of piecing a set together from what was left in stock at this time of year.  Whew, felt good to make a buy though and I can’t wait to see it all on our deck next weekend!

Back at home, Joey did some deck/yard work and I made burritos for lunches this week, cleaned the floors, read (sorta) and harvested our eggplant!!! Isn’t she a beauty?!  Just a tad better than our last attempt at growing eggplant 😛  I sauteed it up for a Sunday Salad.  Can you tell which salad has real feta and which has tofu feta??  I maybe didn’t let it refrigerate for a full 5 hours like I was supposed to, so it was more goat cheese texture than feta texture, but YUM!  We walked the pups and watched Big Brother but the highlight of the night, was seeing our string lights over the deck ♥