Checking off the to do list.

I'm so tired. Here it is 10:38 PM EST and I am so tired but feeling so accomplished. I woke up and sat with my morning cup of coffee, looking through the newspaper and cutting coupons. We went through all of the ads. Then I ventured out to the front yard and started pulling weeds. I knew we had a plan of harvesting our potatoes and didn't want to waste the compost and dirt from those bins. We figured that we could move the dirt/compost mix from back to the front garden area - but first those weeds had to go. We sat and pulled and apparently it wasn't quite as bad as I thought or we are just really efficient because we went through it in no time and were off to the potato bins.
POTATO! POTATO! POTATO! It is so exciting to excavate and find those little nuggets of gold. We found little tiny baby ones and ginormous ones - so so exciting! Not to mention that we grew (I'm guessing) around five pounds of potatoes!!! SWEET...these will go nicely with some pork tenderloin in the next couple of days and I'm sure another meal (or two?).
Then we (and by "we" I mean "Mark") brought the dirt around and we spread it over the front garden - which makes it look so nice. Strangely though, us being out there cleaning encouraged some of the other neighbors to come out and clean up their spaces...I mean, I'm talking baby steps here but still...counts! We had one neighbor come out and sweep up her door frame and main hall area - she asked if we were coffee drinkers and if she could have an old container to add dirt to for cigarette butts...others were talking to us about gardening (both the flower garden in the front and the vegetable garden in the back). We had kids playing in the front yard, neighbors being somewhat neighborly and our garden looks really pretty.
After all that, we went through the remaining items from my friend and her daughter from their "great move". We finished playing "keep or toss" with the toys and browsed through a ton of books and took the remaining to Goodwill (I'm talking boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff...I'm thinking it was 3-4 VAN FULLS)...amazing what she collected over the years and was ready to get rid of and after our children went through and kept all that their hearts desired and still had that much to giveaway. Our friend is ALMOST settled, I'm impressed by everything she has been able to do in the past couple of weeks.
Then, we went over to my parents' house and visited with a family friend that we haven't seen in many, many years. It was nice to catch up and share old stories, talk about babies (who have now grown into young adults) and make tentative plans for future get togethers. Did I mention that we were even ON TIME for the party and brought a cucumber (mostly from our garden), tomato (mostly from Aullwood Farm) and Mozzarella Salad (YUM!).

Gotta say...I think we kicked a little ass today.