A Very Good Friday (and not so good Sunday)

I had Friday off from work for Good Friday, so Lilli got to skip school and stay home with me! I'd been planning for a few weeks to take her out to LaVergne and visit Brent since he never gets to show her off at work. But, I kept it a surprise for Brent just in case we couldn't make it out there, so he was pretty surprised when I called him around 10:45 and asked him if he wanted some visitors!LaVergne is about a 20-30 minute commute from our home downtown, and it was just long enough for her to drift off and fall into deep enough of a sleep to be a little clingy and out of it once we got there - plus with much of the office staring at her she was being unusually shy! But, after a few minutes and once the crowd died down she found her groove. Brent's coworkers (Craig and Michael) in his "pod" pulled out all their toys - cups, a rubber band ball, and empty CD spindles. Minutes of entertainment for the young and old!
And who says working in an office is boring???
She played back there with them for nearly an hour while we all visited and "marveled" at all of Lilli's tricks. Then we took her around to visit a few other friends. Since I worked there for nearly 5 years as well I have quite a few friends and people I enjoy visiting. We stopped in to see Leah - and she sat Lilli down and gave her her performance review and bonus evaluation - it is that time of year at Brent's office!
These pictures crack me up! Lilli is intently listening to her! We were all dying!!
You mean raises are small this year?? Well, I guess it's better than nothing!
Whew! A good review, I should be safe for another year!
I really didn't expect to visit with his coworkers for an hour and a half - my initial plan was to visit maybe 20 or 30 minutes and then go out to lunch with Brent! We went out to Zaxby's for lunch. Aaaah, chicken!!!!
Brent also drove us past our old house in Smyrna where we lived for over 7 years - I wish I had taken a picture! They're building a massive hotel literally in our old backyard - I am SO glad we moved. The lady who bought our house also hasn't taken care of it - all my old rosebushes have died and our old little garden (that we had a little white picket fence around) literally has trees grown up in it that are taller than me. It's kind of sad really.

The down-side of visiting Brent during the day meant that the only naps she took were 30 minutes out there and 30 minutes back - I just could not get her to go back to sleep once we got home. She wasn't fussy, but I had made us dinner reservations at Suzy Wong's House of Yum for that evening - and since it's a nice restaurant it would just be better to take in a well-napped baby. But, I'm glad Lilli got to visit her LaVergne buddies who always enjoy seeing her pics on Facebook and rarely get to see her in real life.

Suzy Wong's was AMAZING! Our 5:30 reservation put us eating WAY earlier than most people would at this trendy place. So, we had a great cabana all to ourselves out on their amazing patio. It's in the heart of downtown but their patio is so secluded you wouldn't believe it. Apparently Lilli was so excited she wanted to whack me on the head with her favorite car!
It's pretty much impossible to get her to keep a bow in her hair these days - I thought that showing her how cute they are might help!

Lilli loved her food! To start with we got vegetable tempura and a Japanese chicken "nugget" - basically chicken with panko bread crumbs. She loved both of them which made us really happy - we're so glad she's starting to be a little more open to various flavors.For our main course we had a sweet and sour chicken type dish, thai spaghetti and coconut curry fried rice. She got really excited when she saw the spaghetti noodles - but they had a kick to them that made her MAD! The other two dishes she enjoyed though. Then we had banana spring rolls for dessert that were awesome!
We finished up around 6:45 and more people were starting to arrive. I'm sure it's much more of a late night place.
Lil even tried her hand at chopsticks, ha!
It was a great restaurant and I'd highly recommend it. We ended up spending quite a bit - $63, but we had a TON of food and could have done fine ordering less. I also had a $20 Groupon coupon, and we had enough left over for lunch yesterday.

We had a great Saturday and I've got pictures from it to share tomorrow. We did another Easter Egg Hunt and then met friends out for dinner in our neighborhood. We had a great time and Lilli was an absolute angel. Then as we got home and I put her down to bed she threw up, and threw up again about an hour later. Ugh!!! We decided to let her sleep in and not take her to Sunday School just in case she had a virus. She slept wonderfully and woke up around 8, ate a ton of breakfast and was in a really good mood. We were just going to take her to second service and right as I was going to start getting her ready she had an upset stomach and was really gurgly sounding. So we decided we would just be best suited to keep her home and avoid her possibly getting sick at church. We still got all dressed up and took a few pics since it is EASTER! I have no clue why our family can't seem to stay well on major holidays, but I will tell you I keep my expectations small on holidays.

Here are just a couple I wanted to share since it is Easter. I'll post more in a couple of days when I get all caught up, Brent got some beautiful ones of her. She wasn't feeling great and wasn't super smiley, but there are still some really nice ones. Right as we got done with them she had a MAJOR meltdown and took a 3 hour nap. I guess she's just got a little bug - she hasn't wanted to eat much at all today but has generally been in good spirits.

Love this one of her in her little dress looking so serious with the beautiful cherry trees behind her! I got this for $10 at a consignment sale - it's a designer boutique brand and I just love it. I wanted us all in white, yellow and brown.
We took her over to Mark's front yard and I chased her around the buttercups. I don't know if you can tell in any of these pics (in some others we have you can), but she has her pearl bracelet on that her Grandma Spears gave her (same one she wore last year). She also has a sterling silver locket on that I bought for her to remember her Aunt Jan when she wears it. Not too long before she died, her Aunt Jan sent her a gift card and we wanted to buy her a keepsake with the money, so I bought her a silver bracelet, ring and locket. It's on the daintiest little chain, and she never even messed with either piece of jewelry during the 45 or so minutes she had it on! She just loves to wear her jewelry.
And of course the family pic in our bunny ears on the porch! It's amazing how much she's grown since the pic last year.
There are a lot of really great ones that I will post later, but for now it's time to get ready for another work week (ugh!).