Let’s begin this Monday morning with a true confession: I really don’t want to write this post simply because I want last night’s picture of my cupcake holders and favorite pink mixing bowl to continue to be the top post on my blog so that when I open my browser, that’s the picture I see each and every time.

And yet I shall push through the desire to never write a post again so that I can tell you about my weekend. I’m here to tell you that I had a FABULOUS weekend, mainly because I decided on Friday evening that I was taking a break from my inbox (and work in general) during the weekend.

That meant I had plenty of free time to do important things like spend time with Clate, the due formerly known as Clay and Cate. Basically, Cate and I have Clay backed into a corner because, seeing that he’s new in town, he doesn’t have a whole lot of friends here yet and therefore we can monopolize his time, especially by forcing allowing him to play Monopoly with us.

Clay’s only been living here a week, but I’m already seeing MAJOR benefits to having a boy in our midst:

1. On Saturday morning, Clay came to my door and said he had something to show me. He had gotten up and taken a little yard tool (um, like I know the name of it) and FIERCELY attacked the large bush that separates our front door. He demonstrated that now I can see if he’s home from my driveway and he can do the same. FURTHERMORE, he also purchased rat traps AND PUT THEM OUT AROUND MY HOUSE FOR ME.

2. Yesterday afternoon, I had to go to a Very Formal Bridal Shower at which I was a hostess with the mostest. I was running late and, upon getting my dress on, suddenly remembered that this was the dress I always have to have help zipping up because I can’t reach the zipper when it gets near the top of the dress. I realized that there was only one viable option and, with a deep breath, called Clay.

“Um, can you come down here and help me out with something?”

“Sure, what?”

“Well, you see the thing is, I NEED YOU TO ZIP MY DRESS UP THE REST OF THE WAY.”

Dead silence. And then –

“Wow.”

For the record, it wasn’t a “I’m really excited WOW.” It was a “WHY DID I MOVE HERE WOW.”

Clay shows up about 20 seconds later (he obviously understood that time was of the essence) and proceeds to look at the back of the dress and say those eight dreaded words that no boy should ever say to a girl:

“I don’t think it’s going to zip up.”

I flipped around with the heat from a thousand fiery suns radiating from my eyes and ASSURED him that the dress was going to zip up AND SO MAYBE HE SHOULD JUST GET TO ZIPPING, NO?

I was ready to walk out the door 30 seconds later with the dress fully zipped up, thankyouverymuch.

3. Before coming over for dinner with Cate and I last night, Clay texted to tell me he’d bring the salad to go with our pasta and then walked through the door holding this:

That’s right. He went and bought three side salads at McDonald’s. How awesome is that?

You know, before Clay moved here, Cate and I were kind of wondering what it was going to be like to have a boy in our midst. We wondered if it might be a little awkward at first and if we could be ourselves around him, if we could really just let our true selves show through. This weekend let us really test the waters as it was pretty much non-stop Clay + Cate + ABB and, if the zipper story above wasn’t enough to let you know that things are going swimmingly, perhaps the following 24 seconds I captured of our evening together last night will give you a little peek into just how much we’re enjoying having Clay here now.

Call me crazy, but I think the three of us are going to be just fine being ourselves around each other.