Saturday In The Park..

.. what a great summer song that is. Could I be anymore nostalgic at this point? Hehe..

The birthday party last night was indeed a lot of fun. I focused more on enjoying everyone's company than eyeing the food and, all things considered, I behaved myself very well-- I had only a couple pieces of barbecue and a teeny-tiny slice of cake which, in all honesty, wasn't all that. Cakes here in Europe are a lot different than what I'm used to. I mean, they're great and all, but they definitely lack the thick, sugar-laden icing goodness that I love.. When my sister and I would get together with one of our cousins during our college years we would go out to the grocery store and buy birthday cakes from the bakery just to have for dessert. Ah, the memories!

For most of the day today I'll be hanging out here at the apartment by myself. Chechu left out super early this morning to go up to Granada for another worship team rehearsal at the church and won't be back until later this afternoon sometime. My original plan was to stay up when he left out this morning, but at 6:45am on a Saturday I was physically unable to get out of bed. Instead I got up around 9 and I've been working ever since. I stumbled across an article last night on cnn.com about how to make more use of your time, and one of the suggestions it offered was to prioritize your to-do list, separating what you have to get done and what you'd like to finish on a particular day. I'm all about making lists and I feel so much more productive outlining on paper the specific tasks that I have to do, but it's frustrating when I'm not able to cross off every single item at the end of the day. So today I've started to put this new priority method into practice and I think it'll be helpful in eliminating stress in a lot of ways.

Tomorrow is my birthday! I think Chechu's got a few surprises planned for me :) We have church in the morning and afterward we'll be going over to his grandmother's house for lunch since tomorrow happens to be her birthday too! All in all, I'm looking forward to spending time with everyone. I definitely wish my sister were here, but we've already made plans to spend our 29th and definitely our 30th together! :)

I'm going to start reading the South Beach Diet today. I think this could definitely be a good option for Chechu and me to get started with.