A few highlights from the weekend! My Instagram friend @blackcat.dots (Caitlin) and her husband (Joe) drove from North Carolina to spend the weekend with us. It was our first time meeting in person!

We had a wonderful time hanging out and getting to know them. And we really enjoyed taking them to our favorite spots around here! I love how long the days feel when you’re spending them with friends or family, just having fun!

But we kind of overdid the fun a bit, and I am super disoriented and tired today. Ha. So the list below feels very bullet-pointy and doesn’t really get into much more than that because that is all my brain can handle now. Hopefully I write something more coherent later!

Friday

• Breakfast sandwiches. We hadn’t had them in a long time. Delish!
• Getting paid. I keep forgetting I get paid by Fake Meats every other Friday. Getting paid every Friday is nice!
• Running some quick errands on lunch break. I hid my rock of the day at the Rain Forest Café and posted it in my Instagram stories and found out Caitlin has been looking to replace a mug she got there years ago. We went the next day and they didn’t have it, but I am glad she saw I hid that rock there and at least got the chance to look!
• Baking some lemon cookies after work. They looked nothing like the recipe but were absolutely delicious!
• Going on a walk with Steven at the Rec Plex.
• Meeting Caitlin and Joe at El Famous for dinner. They had arrived in Chicago the night before and spent the night in the city then explored all day and it was fun to hear about their day and FINALLY MEET IN PRESON!
• Taking them on the warehouse tour.
• Them being so excited to meet all of our cats and the cats mostly being social for the whole weekend! Ned was so scared Friday night that he was trembling, but he quickly got over that and loved on them, especially Caitlin. And Khali actually made appearances.
• The cute toys and treats they brought the cats.
• Our Pusheen blind box exchange. Caitlin and I both really like Pusheen so before she came I ordered two of the blind boxes from the new keychain series for us – then when she got here she pulled out two boxes because she had done the same! Ha! She also gifted me some beautiful painted rocks.

Saturday

• Getting snow. Joe really wanted to see snow and we got about an inch Friday night then it mostly melted by Saturday afternoon. Perfect! The weather was actually really decent for February!
• Getting a short walk in on the treadmill before everyone was up. It was a nice quiet time for me to do things on my phone (ha) because I wasn’t on it much of the rest of the weekend (which is a nice break!).
• Going to Wildberry for breakfast. Delicious, as usual. I got the vegan hash and a chai.
• Walking and hiding rocks at Hastings Lake. They drove through so many states to get here they were able to hide in 7 of them! And we found a few painted rocks at Hastings Lake too, which was fun, because even though Caitlin has been painting and hiding rocks for years, she only found her first a couple of months ago! Nuts!
• Hanging out at home and trying Vegemite (hilarious and gross) and Biscoff spread (amazing and delicious).
• Meeting another local rock painter at a café. While we were away our husbands planted some seedlings – it turns out Joe is really in to that too!
• Lou Malnati’s for dinner. Joe really loves pizza and wanted to try the deep dish (and Steven loves pizza too, so it worked out perfectly! We had a lot of good food this weekend!).
• Painting by the fireplace while we listened to Top Gun: Maverick.

Sunday

• Walking on the treadmill before everyone was up.
• Getting donuts in Zion. Caitlin and Joe love donuts and we really wanted to take them to our favorite donut shops but it didn’t logistically make sense, so we tried the local shop and everyone seemed to like them! Yay! I had a yummy chai.
• Going to the beach. They wanted to see Lake Michigan and check out the rocks and it was such a beautiful February day to be there! That was a big highlight for them (and it was for me too!).
• Going up to Milwaukee for the rest of the day! We had a lot of fun! We:
  • Went to the The Vanguard for lunch and had delicious apps and brats.
  • Went to Sip & Purr to play with cats and buy merch and donate rocks! One of my favorite Sip & Purr employees was there and I had a great time catching up with them. I also met a woman who thought she knew me. She graduated the same year as me from a somewhat close high school and also played soccer so that could be it!
  • Checking out the area around Sip & Purr. There are a lot of neat shops and public art there. I got some early birthday gifts for a few people, yay.
  • Going ax throwing! It was a place we’ve been to twice before and Caitlin and Joe both really enjoyed it (and did well – it was their first time!) and I even got the ax (really, a hatchet) to stick a few times, yay!.
• Dinner out at Milwaukee Burger Company – but back near the house (not in Milwaukee), ha and going to Woodman’s. We realized they order Kringle all the time so we took them to Woodman’s so they could pick out some in person to take back! (Kringle are from a town near here).

Lowlights

• Dinner Sunday night. We planned to go to The Palomino in Milwaukee but we went there and it was closed, so then we were going to order Chinese food from by our house but the phone number didn’t work. Ugh. I hate looking up places to eat on the fly. Just hate it. The burger place was fine though!
• Not having time to cook for them. We wanted to make chili for them but ended up eating out most of the time. Darn it.
• Being so dang tired by the end of Sunday night. I was so tired I could barely form sentences. I’m going to sleep so hard tonight!