Neal and I had a great — albeit full — weekend.

We spent Saturday morning working on the yard. I wanted to plant new potted plants and Neal did a whole lot of pulling weeds.

Here are the multitude of plants I bought before I planted them.

I think I got my camera lens wet, so excuse the blurry part in the next couple of pictures, HAHA.

So, these are my finished pots on my front porch.

And here are the pots I put on our deck.

I bought mums and a bunch of other fun stuff.

I love plants, and although I usually don’t water them enough, I’m committed to keeping them alive this time.

Then Neal and I went over to visit my parents and their cats, which are sisters to Simone and Ferris.

Here is Shiraz:

And here is her sister, Merlot:

Can you tell my parents like wine? HAHA.

My dad loves to cook, so he made steaks on the grill with grilled sweet potatoes. I got some shots of him cooking, and one of Neal and my mom.

As usual, everything was sooo good. Here’s a shot of my plate.

Ummm… yum. Just yum.

Then we headed home and decided to try to straighten up our bedroom, which is really a huge mess of clothes. Ferris and Simone helped.

How cute are they? They pretty much have to be with us at all times, so no matter where we are in the house, they are sure to follow. Case in point, we were working on cleaning out the built-ins in our office (which Neal recently built nice doors for). Simone decided she would help organize.

She really wasn’t a big help.

Sunday, Neal and I woke up early to get started doing some things before we had to head to his hometown for a family picnic.

I took cheese and crackers and made bruschetta to take.

I got this great recipe from a coworker of mine. I usually put some olive oil on some French bread and toast it up to serve with the bruschetta.

So we headed east to Neal’s hometown to spend the afternoon with the family. It was a really nice time. Good food and I finally got to see my in-laws.

I took some pictures of this really committed butterfly on Neal’s aunt’s butterfly bush. This thing was on there forever.

We grilled.

… and played horseshoes.

… and threw the ball for Baxter.

I made Neal and his taller younger brother, Drew, pose for a lot of pictures, because I think they are both super cute.

Seriously. Aren’t they cute?

And then I made Neal pose with me. I think he was done taking pictures at this point…

It was a really nice time. At the end of the night, Neal’s uncle set off incredibly awesome — and totally illegal — fireworks. He brought out the “birthday cake” which was basically this large box. He lit one fuse and it set off 16 fireworks, one after another. It was really cool. I love fireworks. Neal and I both got to see family we haven’t seen in a while, and I really enjoyed that. Neal’s parents are visiting next weekend, too, so we’ll have more time to catch up and make up for this summer.

Monday was another great day. We had some friends over for a cookout. I was having such a good time, I didn’t take pictures of Amanda’s great bacon dip, or Andi’s mac and cheese, or Neal’s awesome barbecue chicken or my sour cream pound cake. I’m sorry. Just trust me when I say everything tasted delicious.

I did take a picture of us enjoying a little board game on our newly un-carpeted deck.

Mmmmm… everyone sort of looks mad in this picture. Not sure what that was about, HAHA. I swear we had fun. I think we were all mad because Shawn beat us really badly at music trivia.

It was such a fun time. Wish it was Labor Day weekend every weekend.