Our Weekend

And just like that, the first week of December is behind us. Craaazy!!

Friday night my friend Holly {who lives just a few miles from me} hosted a party at her house; I was able to see and hang out with some former co-workers too and also enjoyed meeting, laughing and connecting with some new people. It was a fun girls night in!

Saturday morning I headed out when Ilah went down for her morning nap. I went to the UPS store to ship off some Morgan Lane bow orders and then hit up Big Lots to pick up some Christmas lights to enterwine in the garland on our fireplace mantle {Mr. Wonderful didn't think we needed them and couldn't believe that I disassembled everything that was already in place to put the lights on, but when I plugged them in, he agreed that the extra touch was really nice!}.

I also bought some garland to line our staircase banister {I got both garlands for free as I had two $10 off coupons! Score!}

And then it was on to Costco {which is always a mad house on Saturdays - but even more so with Christmas just weeks away}. I felt like I was in a rink of bumper cars with all the massive carts rapidly coming around every turn. I wasted no time and dashed through the store and did self-checkout. The regular check out lines were 48 hours long. I'm not sure what came over me, but while I was in the store, I just couldn't wait to get home to my family. I just wanted us all to be nestled together in our cozy home. The warm feeling of Christmas was in the air and I was excited to get home to cook lunch for us and to see Ilah walking around all over the place, playing with her toys - and finding her way back to the Christmas tree again and again!....

Ilah discovered that she could see her reflection in one of the bulbs so she stepped in to get a closer look at herself! Ha!...

And then she gave a contribution and put her own special touch on the Christmas tree {the photo below was taken on my phone}....

She cracks us up!! She put that duck inside of the tree and then took off!!

I made Yaki Tacos for lunch {"Yaki" being Teriyaki}. There's a restaurant that I used to go to often in California called "Islands". Have you ever been to one? I always got the same thing every time I went...their Teriyaki tacos. I found a copycat recipe last year and made the tacos from scratch. They taste exactly like the ones at Islands!! It's a lot of work to make them {because even the teriyaki sauce is made from scratch} but they are worth the effort!! Here is the recipe!!

My husband likes them plain with just teriyaki chicken, homemade teriyaki sauce and melted jack cheese...

But I load mine up with shredded lettuce, diced tomato and green onions! {adding some sour cream to the mix is good too!}....

Ilah went down for a nap right as I finished making lunch so we were able to eat and watch a movie together while she was napping. We watched "The Family that Preys" - and while although you can pretty much predict what was going to happen in each scene, it was a movie that we both enjoyed. Kathy Bates was wonderful, yet again, in this role. A nice movie with no sex and no cursing. How rare.

After the movie I put some finishing touches on our Christmas decor, we played with Ilah, cleaned up the kitchen and then before you knew it, it was her bedtime. I really do miss her when she goes down for the night. While although I sometimes crave some quiet time to myself, I truly do love spending my days with our amazing, funny, energetic, animated little girl!

When Ilah goes down for the night, Dele and I usually use a few hours of the evening to hop on our laptops but we sometimes get sucked in and stay on for waaay too long!! Before we know it, it's midnight {or even later}. We stay up way too late. For the past few weeks we've been going to bed around 2 a.m. We're nuts!!

Sunday morning we checked out a new church in our area. My husband visited on his own a month or so ago but I didn't go because I had just had a root canal and was in sooo much pain and was drugged up on meds and stayed in bed for hours that entire weekend {luckily Ilah napped the entire time my husband was gone}. Dele really liked the church and I couldn't wait to go check it out and we finally went on Sunday. I was so touched, in so many ways. More on this in another post!!

On a random note: If you're curious how my husband's name {Dele} is pronounced, it's "day-lay" : )

After church we did some grocery shopping and picked up Panda Express for lunch. Their fortune cookies are the best!! My husband always lets me have his : )

Then we "somewhat" watched the movie Elf. I say "somewhat" because it was on but we were enthralled with Ilah.

After Ilah went down for the night, I made lunch for Dele to take to work and then made some hair bows for Valentines Day, while he hopped on the computer to work on developing his Windows phone 7 apps.

It was SO cold this weekend - particularly on Sunday!! It was in the 30's!! I stepped out for church without a jacket not realizing how cold it was outside and froze my [not so little] tooshie off!! Gotta start keeping a warm jacket in the car now!!

Hope you all had a wonderful and blessed weekend!!