we finally have become domestic...well, almost

the majority of my weekend was spent with none other than my favorite cousin, justin. he came over saturday afternoon and we were able to fit in some tennis before our baby sitting shift started. my parents went out for valentines day, so we got the privilege of katie-duty. it was quite fun though. justin seems to be in a painting phase, so while i stayed home, he went out to big lots and got us a couple canvases to paint on. letting him drive my car was quite nerve-racking and after not knowing how to turn the lights on, he eventually made it back all in one piece, thank goodness! :) we painted until around 12:00am and then i got tired and mad at my painting and went to bed. ha!

sunday, we went out to lunch at kings, which is down in downtown long beach. while my parents were parking the car, betsy, justin and i went in to get a table. when they walked in the door, we all hid behind our menus and waited to see what they would do. gary, being gary, walked over and sat down at another table and when the waitress started to bring them bread and menus says "you, know, i think we may just want to join their table over there" (pointing to us). poor girl looked so confused! after lunch, my parents had another event thing to go to up at the Reagan Library for which they left around 3pm and left betsy to babysit kaite for the first 3hrs. justin and i decided to re-try our luck at painting and went over to Lows, where we walked around and got lost, looking for free scrap wood. finally, against justin's will (men...psh!) we asked someone. we got some pretty cool pieces from the scrap pile and then took them home to begin work. some of the pieces were rather large and i was trying to figure out a way to cut them, when justin comes out of the garage with a saw! who knew we had a saw?!? not me... after a quite difficult time sawing away, we got some better painting sized boards. i began work on a giraffe as, justin started painting some penguins, which i'm inclined to believe is a bit of his feminine side coming through :)

after, i put katie to bed, which was about 9:00, we decided that we were hungry and realized that we hadn't had dinner (don't worry, katie got dinner...i didn't starve her). justin and i decided to cook for ourselves...shocker, right? we got the beef out of the freezer and defrosted it in the microwave, spent a good 5 mins looking for dry sherry for our meat marinade (neither of us knew what sherry looked like), prepared the sauce and got out the rice cooker. all in all, it was pretty much the best beef and broccoli i have ever tasted! we did good! and we didn't' even have half of the right ingredients, but either substituted or made due with what we had. we were pretty proud of ourselves.

oh, but the night wasn't over, oh no. i still had a giraffe to paint and justin, some penguins to finish. not to mention a jacuzzi heating up outside. but, i shall leave that tale of the hot tub for a later time...perhaps tomorrow.

well, we may have the cooking, cleaning and painting down, but when it comes to a pile of pillows, we just can't resist. hence the reason we have ALMOST become domestic. haha