Talk about a productive long weekend

We decided to stay in town and hibernate this weekend -- making as few commitments as possible in order to finally catch up on sleep, relaxing and things that needed to be done. After a month of Ryan working long hours (to the point that some days he didn't get home in time to see the kids before bed) and me putting in hours on evenings and weekends, we both needed some time off.

What better excuse then to get work done around the house? That's relaxing, right?

Actually, it was. This weekend completed to do list is as follows:

• Take kids to the park
• Rake front and back lawn
• Share rake with the kids who want a turn raking front and back lawn.
• Cut down two cedar hedges that did not survive the winter and discover that the kids think it's fun to pick up all the shavings and bag them in lawn bags.
• Wash the outside of all windows (the advantage of living in a bungalow is you can reach all windows with the aid of one small ladder).
• Get told by oldest kid to wait for him before washing the windows because he wants to help by washing the basement ones.
• Realize that in 10 years the kids will likely not want to be so helpful.
• Make a Home Depot run and laugh as the kids try to drive the big flatbed cart (we needed wood for a project that didn't get started this weekend).
• Clean three years worth of grease off bbq. Kids weren't all that interested in that one.
• Have in-laws over for dinner but don't cook anything because they're bringing the meal. Chip in by baking a pumpkin pie and making salad dressing.
• Take kids to the park again.

After this three day weekend, we were both pretty tired. But, at least for me, not in that mental exhaustion kind of way of the last few weeks, but instead, in that wow-I-actually-did-all-that-in-three-days kind of exhaustion. It felt good, especially since the weather was so beautiful you wanted to be outside doing things.

Now, (I hate to say this but I need to) we need it to rain for a weekend (or at least one day of the weekend) so we can tackle cleaning out the spare room. There's barely space to walk into to it right now, let alone sleep in it and sunny weekends give us every excuse to continue dealing with it by simply shutting the door.