Fun, Food, and Family

 Being in a new house I feel like I'm getting back into some of my more useful habits...you know, like sleeping in my bed (instead of the recliner), taking a shower in the morning, doing dishes before bed, etc. It feels good. It feels right. 

This weekend was busy and relaxing all at the same time. 

On Sunday, I focused on getting the scrapbook room/office unpacked and ready for use. The room faces south and has a big window. A ton of natural light and will make it my happy place. It feels bigger than the other room, even though it's technically smaller. I feel like everything has it's own place now, which makes a big difference. 

Standing at the door looking in. My desk fits nicely against the wall and window. 

A view from standing inside the room towards the desk.

Standing at my desk looking behind me. The colorful box on the floor is the "cat" box. Meaning Lucy has claimed it for her sleeping while I'm in the office. 

I'm really happy about how it all came together. The shelf with the crab wasn't in the last room and I think that shelf made all the difference. More flat space for my crap. The only thing missing now is photos on the wall. Those are on order and will be here soon. 

I also found my dining room table this weekend. I love the dining room here. It's bigger than the last one for sure. I'm still waiting for the bar I ordered to come in to finish unpacking that stuff (they say October 28th delivery). Once that's here and put together, then that'll be everything. I can then move all the boxes downstairs and make this place home. 

The Niece and the sister in law and I hopped in a car on Saturday and headed to visit some family in Lacey. Every year we say we're going to and every year goes by and we don't. So this year we purposely put it on the calendar. Because if it's not on the calendar it doesn't happen. 

On our way to see them we decided to stop at a Diner, Drive-Ins, and Dive location in Tacoma called Southern Kitchen. It's what you think it is...all southern, deep fried goodness. The place is definitely a dive, but a clean dive. The waiter was so happy and friendly. He was busy though as he was the only one. If you go and expect fast service, you will be disappointed. 

We ordered our sweet tea first...and MY GOD was it sweet. It was like drinking syrup. But man it was good. The next thing we know these little corn bread pancakes were delivered to our table. 

Now a little something about corn bread. Mrs. Braspir makes the corn bread in our family. She has a special pan that she swears by and a "special" recipe (it's not special it's a family joke now that she uses Jiffy). Her corn bread is the BOMB. It never occurred to me to EVER put corn bread in the form of a pancake...but y'all...it was sooo good. Crispy on both sides, fluffy in the middle...a little butter and orange marmalade ...man. So good. Mrs. Braspir will still hold the title, but she's got competition now. 

Next came our meal. Which after eating a corn bread pancake we knew we'd not finish. Sister in law had catfish, cornbread stuffing (that was dynamite!) and mac n cheese. The Niece had BBQ Brisket, mac n cheese and corn. I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and corn. It was all delicious and, of course, way too much food. 

But we couldn't stop there. The waiter, bless him, told us what they had for dessert and one of the items was Peach Cobbler. Which is one of my all time favorites. So we ordered ONE to split between the three of us. We figured we'd have plenty of room for a couple of bites. Instead...THIS showed up. 

I wish I would have put a spoon in this photo for scale. Suffice it to say that's an entire serving bowl of peach cobbler! Ugh. We took half of it home. 

After gorging ourselves on southern food we headed off to visit the cousins. It was so good to get caught up with them. I used to see two of them every Christmas when I'd go to Tucson. But since I haven't been going to Tucson I've not been seeing them. They aren't getting any younger, and neither are we. 

We also got to see their daughter who made a pumpkin Bundt cake for us to share. I was sure we couldn't eat another thing, but when she said pumpkin, cream cheese and caramel...well, it'd be rude to  not at least taste it. 

The only other exciting thing that happened this weekend was the smoke detectors started chirping at 4am on Saturday. Why do they always go off at 4am? At any rate, I couldn't figure out why when I changed the battery it didn't stop chirping. So I left it until I could hear from the Property Manager. I posted on FB too and so many people told me I had to reset it. Finally, I got brave and hit the reset button for 15 seconds...which makes the alarm go off for 15 seconds ... and it worked. The cats were so far under the bed I didn't think I'd ever see them again. But oh...the fun of getting to know this place. 

Ok...that's it. I'm going to take my cup of coffee and head up to my new office space and get to work!