One Weekend, Two Ways

Last weekend was a bit different for us. After work on Thursday, I met up with a lovely group of girlfriends and we headed west, finding our way to Seattle for a much-needed girls weekend. Dan would be having a different kind of weekend - complete with hanging out with Lana, his favorite girl.

Three friends and I went to the Creating Keepsakes Convention, a weekend-long convention of all things scrapbook related.

 

We all took some great classes and stocked up on the latest and greatest papers and supplies at the mega-huge vendor fair. And since we had no husbands with us to tell us no, and no children in the way, we shopped at stores we don't have here. Crate and Barrel, Gap, Bass Shoes and Gymboree to name a few. We ate at Whole Foods and Cheesecake Factory. We stayed up too late drinking wine and laughing. We swapped stories in the van and ate onion rings and chocolate malts. It was the exact thing all of us needed.

Dan, on the other hand, didn't spend the weekend shopping and scrapping. On Friday morning, while I was waking up to in-room coffee and trying to get the hotel's treadmill to work, Dan was getting Lana fed, dressed and dropped off at daycare on time. Since Friday was his day off, he spent the morning hunting. (A side question: Is hunting the direct antithesis of scrapbooking? Anyone familiar with that scale? Was one marriage really on completely opposite polar ends last weekend?) His efforts were not fruitless.

 

Two birds - not a bad day. But look again. See that monster pheasant? Yeah, it's huge - probably the biggest bird Dan's ever got.

Saturday, while I took classes and gushed over meeting scrapbooking royalty, Dan and Lana went to town and did errands as he would normally do them. Although this time he was accompanied by the blonde two-year old and the purchases at the hardware store included a pink camo t-shirt that I'm pretty sure wasn't meant for me. He then went home and made a gourmet dinner of deer steaks, fried potatoes, sauteed mushrooms and creamy corn. (It was really awesome. I had leftovers on Sunday. I should talk him into cooking more often.)

I got back late Saturday night and lounging around with my family on Sunday morning, I certainly had a new-found appreciation for them. I was more relaxed and less uptight about things. We even had an unexpected surprise.

 

A cattle drive, right in front of our house.

Yup, you don't see many of those on the streets of Seattle.