Small happenings.

Friend Danielle came up on Friday from The Heights (#truefriendscommute). We let the boys play at my house for a bit in the morning, and then put everyone in their car seats and drove to Market Street for lunch. Three boys, two mamas, and no tears! It really was a sweet little miracle (my first real friend-lunch since West was born with both boys, and I needed it). The simple outing somehow made me feel like a real, fully functioning human being for the first time in many months. I've said it before and I'll say it again - the transition to two has been hard, so I'm just grateful for small victories. It was just a nice, happy morning (the sunshine and ridiculously perfect weather certainly didn't hurt).

I made this pasta for dinner again the other night for the second time. Healthy and easy. I just pulled some leftovers out of the fridge for my lunch. Leftovers make me really happy. 

Mike and I went out to dinner with friends last night - down in Houston, for the second week in a row. We were in a pretty regular routine of getting downtown before West was born (enter a few dark and stormy months), and we're finally back at it. This makes me happy, too. I love where we live, but The Woodlands is not a culinary epicenter by any means, and leaving our little bubble is refreshing and necessary. Houston - it actually has really great restaurants, and makes me a little less Manhattan-sick (we tried Glass Wall last weekend and really liked it - Haven last night wasn't as good as expected, but we had good company and a really great dessert). 

Also. Big news, internet! I'm abandoning the ampersand. It drives Mike crazy, amongst other things. He's never understood why I started doing it in the first place (I think because someone else was and I probably wanted to be like that person or something - silly). Well. Ampersands are for titles, abbreviations and not for sentences and writing, so I'm going to stop, cold turkey. This really isn't even worth mentioning, except that Hey JMW! Be so proud of me!

(And now I have to go edit the first two paragraphs of this post. Old habits die hard.)

Also, I deleted my Facebook account last week - for the second time in the past few months, and for a lot of reasons, but this time for real (pinky swear). I just deleted a lengthy paragraph explaining why, but this article didn't do anything to dissuade me. Ick. Also, on my final "confirm" page to deactivate my account, Facebook showed me photos of all of the people that "won't be able to contact [me]" any more, and really, that was the icing on the cake - because is that really what we've come to?! I'm grateful for tangible friendships and meaningful connections.  

Mike is off to Hong Kong and Singapore as we speak, my mom lands in Houston in a few hours, and Quinn keeps asking to go to the zoo to ride choo choos with Grandma because they did that together last fall two days before West said hello. Quinn found a video clip on the iPad the other day with her talking in the background and said Grandma!! again and again with a big smile. Just another sign that he's growing up (such a memory!), and that he recognizes her voice makes me so very happy. We'll all have a nice week together and I'm really happy to have her help.

What else. I have a zillion photos from the past week, but all I've wanted to do it make little movies. I found a new tinted moisturizer that has changed my life in the past 48 hours. I got my hair cut / colored on Saturday (the day after this photo) and it is feeling very... blond(ish). You know. Important things.