Productive... to be, or not to be.

I've had a pretty productive week considering I'm still battling my illness from the weekend, although yesterday was nearly a complete write-off. Tuesday I had a Pampered Chef show for my mom which went well but it was very draining. Wednesday morning I got up early and made pancakes for breakfast for Matt and then walked Gabe and Cash over to the vet to get Cash's shots up to date. Then I went to a prenatal appointment where my doctor gave me some very pitying looks after hearing about my health issues and inspecting my ever-changing ribs. My mom had Gabe while I was at my appointment so I grabbed some sushi before I went to pick him up. That evening I was craving some Cranberry Cinnamon Goat Cheese from Sobeys so I went to the one by our house... never again. There are 3 Sobeys in town - two are quite nice, but the one by us is a pared down, hardly carry a thing sort of store. Their meat section is the size of a bookcase. It's wretched. Anyway, they didn't have my Cranberry Cinnamon Goat Cheese, just Plain or Herb. Since I was there however, I just grab a pack of the plain with the intent of making it better. So I barbqued some steaks and some potato slices, made up some garlic toast with 1/3 of a loaf of french bread I had bought and sliced the rest up to serve with the goat cheese I bought which I added strawberries and lemon zest to. It was actually quite nice. That night I finalized the menu for my brother-in-law's surprise birthday party this weekend where we're having classed-up man food featuring a slider bar with tonnes of unique toppings.
The next day however I was having a less productive day... Gabe was a bit of a handful all morning and so I was really pleased when Matt called to ask if he could come home to have lunch with me. I threw on some soup and coffee and heated up the last bit of that French loaf and we had a nice little lunch. The only issue with that nice break in the day was that I've always known that if Gabe has lunch before nap time, he doesn't nap. Normally he goes down between 11:30 and 12:30 for a nap and by 3:00 I was so frustrated with the fact that he was still awake that I tried to pull him into my bed and cuddle him to sleep. By about 4:20 he finally fell asleep. My entire afternoon was a write-off. That, and my fever came back a bit, probably just from over-exhertion, but still. So Gabe woke up at 5 and I had just enough time while he was asleep to write an email to a committee I'm on explaining that I was too sick to go to a meeting that night and filling them in on everything I was supposed to have prepared for the meeting. I called Matt and asked if we could order in and I was so, so, so glad that he said yes. The rest of the evening I tried to make up for the fact that I got very nearly nothing done all day so I cleaned my kitchen and hashed out some Pampered Chef stuff and more details for the surprise party this weekend.
Today, however, has been much nicer. We got an equity cheque in the mail from Co-op, some books Matt's been really eager to get finally came today too, my living room is tidied (no small feat when you have to lean over a basketball-sized lump to pick up toys), I did some gardening and I did some cooking too!
I had a case of strawberries in my fridge that were getting old so I decided to make up a strawberry granita for Matt and I for tonight and since I had so many strawberries and nearly a whole watermelon too, I made up some strawberry-melon pops for Gabe for the next week or so.
I bought my rose bush on Monday and planted it out front and today when I went to check on it the growth has been substantial already. It's hard to recall the height well enough to say if it's much taller, but it's certainly much fuller! It looks like it's doing really well. I also planted some herbs two weeks ago which are finally coming up. My fennel poked through yesterday, my chives are coming through today and hopefully my mint and basil won't be far behind. I also noticed that my strawberries from last year are coming back well! Yay for the garden!
Tomorrow I'm mostly prepping for the surprise party, which includes making 4 dozen cupcakes into a golf-course scene and then Sunday we're driving to Calgary for the party and hopefully a short IKEA trip. Monday is devoted to getting the nursery ready and putting our house back together from all the reorganizing we've been doing lately. Hopefully, at the very least, we can get all of our furniture in the right rooms!
Wish us luck!

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)