My mother-in-law is visiting from the midwest for the a few days. We were a bit late to pick her up from the airport on account of my wanting to demonstrate my new handyman skills. BH & I helped a co-worker with a leaky sink ultimately replacing the whole faucet. It's left me sore but the faucet looked great and the dishwasher install confidence helped give me the courage to try my hand at this repair.
After we picked her up we drove back to the west suburb where we live and waited for my sister to finish work so we could go to dinner together. We tried to get a table at a small Japanese place in town only to be told without reservations we were out of luck for the evening. We were on our way to a slightly larger burb when I recalled another Japanese and sushi restaurant where we were one of many but seated almost immediately. It was fun and delicious and full of laughter.
Today followed suit it was fun, delicious and full of laughter. My sister thinks we need to have more company we seem to do things right when we have guests. I made pancakes with peoples choice of blueberries, pecans or blueberries and pecans. I made a few pancakes before my sister could go to work for the Saturday shift which luckily is only from 10-2pm. When she returned we had done the grocery shopping, stopped at the library, eaten lunch and make a desert for the quarterly church potluck. *Apparently our church used to have monthly potlucks - quarterly potlucks are almost too much for us so we can hardly imaging this being a monthly event*.
When my sister C arrived she found me already half sleeping on the couch awaiting her arrival. She ate a bit and apparently took a cat nap with me while my mother-in-law and BH played ban.ana.grams. After we both woke from these short cat naps we all went to the Chinese garden downtown. It was great and my mother-in-law had not been before. We used this great cultural pass from our library which got 2 of us in for free, and with my sisters student ID we only had to pay 1 full price and 1 student price. Pretty fun and cheap afternoon.
We then made our way to what has become a favorite of ours a cupcake shop. This store has a rotating weekly menu and Saturdays (the day we make it into the city most frequently) has our two most favorite cupcakes. We're unsure if they're our favorite because they're the ones we have had most or because they truly are the best flavors. My favorite is a peanut butter and jelly combination and BH loves the An.des mint flavored cupcake. With the 4 of us my mother-in-law thought it would be nice after a decently long debate by my sister to just get 1 of each so all of us could try each flavor - 6 in total. This was wonderful and the shop people were happy to sell us more. There was an An.des mint panic when BH realized the minty chocolate cupcake no longer came topped with its signature An.des mint. Instead along with all their other handmade garnishes they'd candied a mint leaf and placed it beautifully atop the chocolate cupcake. After some discussion the lady helping us offered us a mint as its a critical component in the cupcake so they always have extra on hand. What was even better was that they provided the mint leaf and the An.des so BH was very happy.
We came home pretty happy about the lovely garden and the 6 cupcakes which awaited us. I got to work on dinner which consisted of;
- Tri-colored fingerling potatoes in olive oil, salt and rosemary seasoning.
- Salmon two ways to please everyone
- Terkyaki with lemon, honey and ginger
- Chilpotle seasoning with lemon zest and juice
- Spinach salad with Vincent Farms cranberries and nuts
We followed the tasty and moderately healthy meal with extremely unhealthy and very fun cupcakes. BH quartered each but mine - no one thought peanut butter would be good or they didn't like jelly. Lucky for me the sliver they did cut out of mine was small because they didn't like any of it. I had parts of the ones I enjoyed and everyone else tried all 6. There ended up being an entire cupcake in a half and 2 quarters left for BH tomorrow. She is delighted with this prospect. We cleaned up the kitchen and then go to work on a couple things for tomorrow.
It was certainly a nice day and tomorrow promises to be just as nice. We have guest passes to the art museum because members can bring an extra person this weekend so we're taking advantage of that lining up perfectly with my mother-in-laws visit. Right across from the art museum is the symphony and this happens to be 1 of our 5 ticket concerts so we got an extra 2 so all 4 of us could go.
More tomorrow on part 2 of the weekend.
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