Weekend Stuff (Long Again)

We've been having a very nice productive and fun weekend. Anthony, who was supposed to have Friday off, but had to work, still managed to get out a bit early and met us at home after Davan and I went to see a staged reading of Oregon Childrens' Theater's upcoming Small Steps production. It was free and really fun! I recommend going to see it when it comes out in April if you're from around these parts. We did some puzzle building and general hanging out for the rest of Friday.

We were up and going on Saturday at 7:00 (at least Anthony and I), in keeping with our new bedtime routine, which I'm loving. I hopped on my bike and rode over to Winco to pick up a short list of things before breakfast. When I got home, Anthony was just getting off the indoor trainer and went to take a shower while I did a short walk around our nearby park.

Then it was breakfast time. I love our weekend breakfast routines. We have pancakes on both Saturday and Sunday, but different ones. What we top them with depends on the season. This weekend was two different types of cranberry relish, one cooked and one raw. The cooked one was left over from last weekend and got finished off yesterday, as Anthony liked it better. Today I added some apple compote to the offerings, but I mostly stuck with the cranberry relish. Raw almond butter is also an option. We always have fresh fruit, as well. It was grapefruit both days plus apples yesterday, as well.

What I love about this weekend breakfast routine is multifold. We all look forward to it because it's tasty. Davan, in particular, loves the predictability of it. I love that eating breakfast out is never an issue. We still have an eating out issue, in that we all seem to think it's a treat, even though we're often just as happy or happier with what we have at home. This is never an issue for breakfast, though, because we know what we're having and we're all happy with it. The Sunday morning pancakes have been going strong for years now (although it used to be on either weekend morning), but adding the routine of Saturday morning pancakes is just a few months old.

Because of the popularity of the breakfasts, we decided to make Saturday and Sunday dinners routine, as well. We picked two meals that we enjoy and that are either easy to do or fun to do together. We're open to switching them up, if necessary, but for now, we're doing sushi on Saturday nights, which consists of veggie, brown rice sushi, two individually tailored rolls each, and seasoned edamame. This constitutes a light meal at our house, which is perfect for Saturday nights because that's our dessert night. Last night we had a raw chocolate fruit pie, which was awesome.

I was in charge of the crust of cashews, rolled oats and dates all food processed and then shaped. Davan was in charge of the fruit, for which she chose clementines and kiwi:

Anthony was in charge of the chocolate sauce made from homemade almond butter, raw cacao powder, dates and some water, which was poured over the top of the fruit:


Davan really liked the chocolate sauce:


After letting setting it in the freezer briefly to let the chocolate sauce set up a bit, we dug in and, boy, was it tasty.

I didn't get any pictures of the slices, but they were not pretty anyway, so it's really no big loss.

In addition to the food yummy-nes of yesterday, we also got in a little yard work, which, believe me, the yard needs in a big bad way, and went to see Jess of Get Sconed! talk at the Central Library. We drove, but parked on the east side of the Willamette and walked over the Hawthorn Bridge and through downtown, which was a lovely walk.

Today we were up and out again, this time Anthony and I did a short ride on the Spring Water Corridor, our standby ride. We got lucky and beat the rain that started about 20 minutes after we got home and is still going strong.

We've started a campaign to scavenge discarded bricks from a factory that is right along the Spring Water Corridor, much to Anthony's distress. He went along and helped, but he was acting like we were robbing a bank the whole time. This bricks are the discards and there are huge piles of them all mossed over at one point. Believe me, as long as we're not making a mess, no one cares about these bricks. We're going to use them to line our bark chip play area in the back yard. This is an old picture from when the bark chips were still looking good (it's a mess back there now with new bark chips needed and a good chunk of weed blocker having been used by birds for nesting), but it gives you the idea:

Yeah. That's a few years ago. The house is a dark blue now. I'd get you a more updated one so you could see how much work needs to be done, but it's raining and I'm not feeling like going out there.

Back at the homestead, we found Davan up and working with the Lego Mindstorms kit, which, other than a brief use after we got it a couple of years ago, has mostly gone unused. I'm glad she's interested again.

We left her to it while we got going with pancakes. Davan, frustrated momentarily by the Legos, showed up in the kitchen for a while and was put to work, which quickly led her to feel like the Legos weren't so bad after all and she wandered away again.

She came back for pancakes, though, after which I spent some time cleaning in the kitchen while Anthony went to help with the Mindstorm building:

With the rain, we're probably mostly going to be hanging out for the day, doing whatever might present itself, at least until dinner, which will be portabello mushroom sandwiches for Davan and I (Bocca burger for Anthony), and then we're off to see Texting the Sun. It's free! :)

I hope you are all having nice weekends, too!