Happy Birthday, Mom! (and All About the Weekend)

First of all, here's a big Happy Birthday wish to MeLissa's mom. We hope she has a year full of happiness, health, and God-willing, wealth! :)

Now....on to the weekend wrap-up:

As we mentioned previously, we had a rather busy weekend! We started out on Friday night with a little informal (but fun!) birthday celebration for our friend Lisa who is still enjoying the ripe old age of 25 (and hopefully will for many more years)! MeLissa made some virgin margaritas to celebrate the occasion (and to try out our new spiffy blender!) and we enjoyed a tasty meal from O'Hana Hawaiian grill.

After dinner we chatted and let Lisa open her birthday presents - she loved them all! :) And, of course, we had some pretty yummy strawberry ice cream (homemade!) to celebrate - we didn't feel like trying for another "caketastrophe" so ice cream's the deal around here for birthdays until Martha Stewart comes to the rescue (seriously, we've written to see if she can come up with a suitable eggless recipe).

On Saturday, MeLissa finished up the baby blanket she made for a friend's little one and we'll be mailing it out (hopefully) this week. We hope they find it helpful in keeping the little tyke warm! Meanwhile, Mark studied....and studied....and studied some more. His board exam is next weekend so he's pretty much spending all his "free" time with his nose in a book!

MeLissa also spent some time quilting Saturday and Sunday. She's actually close to finishing the Drunkard's Path block. She just has 3 seams to go...but due to Sunday's activities taking precedence (and a little project for Mark which we'll discuss shortly), she expects to finish it later during the week. So far, the block is looking very bright and cheery!

Instead of finishing her block, she and Mark spent a fair amount of time on Sunday recording a video (which MeLissa will try to piece together over the next few days) for Mark's physical therapy class on various excercises, stretches and assessment techniques for those who sit behind desks all day to fix them right up when they start having problems. Apparently this malady is referred to as "Upper Cross Syndrome" in chiropractic circles. MeLissa is now privvy to the why it is Mark keeps making her do all these exercises and stretches she isn't terribly fond of. :)

Finally, we wrapped the weekend up by doing a little experimental cookin'. This week's foray was into the realm of bread making...specifically, spelt bread. MeLissa decided to try because she was craving a hamburger and really wanted to have it on a hamburger buns. Since she can't buy hamburger buns that she can actually eat, she decided to make her own. All things considered, they turned out pretty decent and worked well for last night's dinner, but we do have a couple of modifications in mind for the next attempt! Alternatively, MeLissa may start using a little low-carb eating trick and just ditch the bun since she's pretty picky - two lettuce leaves seemed to work pretty well at the hospital cafeteria the last time Mark had surgery. As for the bread itself, it also turned out pretty decent, however, due to a good portion of the batter going to the buns, it was pretty flat. Mark was certainly grumbling about his "toast sticks" while eating breakfast this morning.

MeLissa also did some grumbling because it appears that one of her favorite foods is just not going to cooperate. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any pictures of evil pineapples. What a shame. At any rate, this pretty much leaves us at a 100% fail rate as far as MeLissa's food reintroduction attempts. We may give the pineapple one more chance later today, but we're not terribly hopeful...