The Dinner of Shame!

Now I know we all make mistakes. Oversights happen, things get misplaced etc. I think (and I hope!) I had the WORST case of forgetfulness EVER yesterday. Have you ever had that dream where you are at school and it's the day of the big exam and you completely forgot to study for it? The panic that hits is overwhelming, the fear of failure is immense. So that's how I felt when the front door opened last night at 5pm and in walked our invited dinner guest, Shirley. We'd been so caught up in our fire fest that the fact that I'd phoned Shirley up last week and invited her for supper, marked it on the calendar, included it in the week's menu planning and bought the groceries for the meal, inexplicably and unforgivably slipped my mind.

It was the most horrendous feeling of shame! Not only had I not prepared a thing, I had NOTHING I could make a meal out of on such short notice. All meat was frozen, no casseroles were on hand to microwave and NO dessert baked. I ALWAYS have a good dessert when someone's coming over. The kids were greeting her and chatting as I raced back and forth in full panic mode, freezer, pantry, fridge.... I'd already started re-heating plates of leftovers for the kids & Murray & myself. There was NOTHING I could do to pretty this up. I did find some meatballs in the freezer. I dumped those in a pot, threw some bottled sauce on them & slammed them into the microwave. Then I threw some butter in another pot & melted that on the stove and made the world's fastest batch of chocolate sauce. So I had 2 plates of corned beef and cabbage (Murray & Shirley), 2 plates of pork stir fry (Honey & Lovey) and slowly defrosting & reheating meatballs and some leftover rice from the stir fry for me. Sweetie wasn't interested in any of the meals until the end when all the pork was gone.

God love Shirley. She didn't bat an eye or question why the heck I was serving 3 different REHEATED meals for supper. All perfectly normal right? omigosh. The extent of humiliation was incredible. I sat down and came out with "uh, we're just sort of having an assortment tonight!" and left it at that for fear she'd run away if she found out what I'd done! During the frantic rummaging, I'd noticed I still had some whip cream left from the Angel Lush Pineapple Cake the other day (expired angel food cake had to be used right away so I couldn't save it for Thursday's supper). There were also some bananas on the counter and maraschino cherries in the fridge! We weren't having "nothing" for dessert, I was serving banana splits! That HAD to be planned right? No one just pulls that out of thin air!

At the end of the meal I fessed up and told her this wasn't really her dinner and promised a repeat invite with an upgraded menu! She was a trooper and said she had no idea and thought I must have been cooking all day to have so many options for the meal!

After dinner Lovey played for her and she gave the kids advent calendars that have messages behind the daily window. They're excited to check them out and get started on December 1!

Burning Up!

We tend to accumulate a fair amount of debris around here. A fence falls apart, a construction project's remnants, packaging and who knows where else this stuff comes from! We sometimes save it up til we have a truckload and then hire someone to come haul our load of crap away. This time I noticed most of it was wood, the old steps, the pickets from the fence. Why pay to send that to the dump when we have a perfectly good firepit???? So we fired that sucker up and spent the afternoon slowly burning small piles at a time. We had a lot of rain earlier in the week so the yard was still pretty damp and the kids enjoyed helping. Murray wasn't so sure about letting them have "fire sticks" as he put it but no one lost an eye or got singed so I consider it successful family togetherness!

They got their work gloves on to help haul the boards to the backyard and we tended the fire (and closely monitored firestick usage). They were hoping to roast some sort of treat but we were out of hotdogs and it was getting close to supper so marshmallows wouldn't have been a good idea.

It took hours but we got rid of a huge pile of wood scraps (no shims were injured Dad, don't worry!)

Lost Our Marbles!

Honey wanted to play marbles today. We've never actually played a game outside, where you use your heel and twist in a circle and make the "pot" (wow, just realized how long since I did THAT!) and try to sink your marbles before the other players do. I can't even remember all the rules or values (crocks worth more, crystals higher rank than beauts and catseyes.... that's about it).

She didn't let that stop her and invented her own game instead. She set up a box lid, a toilet paper tube and extra marbles as obstacles. We each got 4 marbles and the object was to shoot your marbles through the obstacles or around them, and up the tube and into the box. First person to get all their marbles in the box won. She & I started playing before Murray got home from work. If you bumped your marble into one of the obstacles, it had to go back to the start. If your marble was bumped by someone else, you had to go back to the start. Getting up the tube was tricky because she'd parked a crock right in front of it!

Murray got home & immediately got invited into the game. He plops done, shoots his first marble directly through all the obstacles and gets a hole in one. I was so disgusted!!!!!!! Just for effect, I hollered, "I'm so mad, I'm going to pee!" and left for the bathroom. The girls almost died of laughter. Bathroom humour is incredibly popular with them right now. I thought we'd be skipping that since they're such girly girls but nope. They're giving it with the best of them and wildly amuse themselves frequently with tales and antics involving said subject matter. They get themselves laughing so hard that they're doubled over and unable to speak!

Mystery Parcel....

A strange package was waiting in the mailbox today when I got home from the gym! I pulled it out, wondering what I'd gotten. Turns out: nothin'! It was for the girls but I didn't recognize the return address. Strange but probably not explosive..... I checked with Murray, he hadn't sent anything. The girls got home and whipped through the homework to be able to get into that envelope. Mystery: NOT solved! It was ordered from Future Shop but no info on the purchaser. So to whoever felt we needed our own copy of Popeye, starring Robin Williams, thank you, they can't wait to watch it (we didn't have time today!)

Lullaby Time

Lovey was practicing her violin the other night when she noticed that she'd done such a good job that Murray had fallen asleep! She was sooooo happy about that and wanted to try it again tonight. I thought he was faking just to please her but he was pretty tired and conked out somewhere around the 10th run of Twinkle Twinkle. She was very proud of herself and enjoyed it so much that she played the song over and over again for at least 10 minutes straight. I thought she'd get tired of it but she kept on going, and going, and going....

Happy Birthday Murphy Baby!!!!!!

Yes, our first born turned 12 today or 84 in dog years! He got a song & cake and the whole works! As you can see, he had a blast at his party!

Family Movie Night--- CANCELLED!!!!

What a bunch! Saturday supper was wild. too wild. Even wilder than usual around here (and THAT'S saying something!!!). They weren't interested in what we were having, sautéed squid on a bed of liverwurst shavings with a side order of pickled cow's tongue. Ok, it wasn't nearly that bad but you'd have thought that's what they saw when I gave them their plate of oven roasted potato, Tbone steak and fresh steamed broccoli. Sweetie managed a bit of potato and some broccoli, Honey tried some of that as well. Lovey couldn't bear to touch any of it. The piece of meat I gave them fit on my baby fingernail!

Skipping Saturday night supper means you don't get dessert AND you don't get to pick a snack for the movie. Surely you could choke down a microbite of meat for that ???? Nope. and then they started falling out of their chairs, and hollering and dancing around and up and down, wandering around the kitchen etc. I asked them to sit down while we ate and suggested that they might not get movie night if they didn't settle down. Murray told them to sit down. They were disinclined to acquiesce to our requests. Murray was losing patience, they were getting louder, rowdier and frankly, quite annoying. Finally he yelled at them to sit properly. I'm pretty sure I'd have fingers leftover if I used them to count the number of times I've heard Murray yell (me? oh there aren't enough fingers and toes in the world to count my explosions!) at them. They were able to behave for about 10 seconds and then took the ridiculousness to even greater heights. Murray looked at them and told them movie night was cancelled. The wailing and caterwauling that ensued was an incredible display of waterworks. Disappointed doesn't even come close to describing it, devastated might be more appropriate (well as a description, not as a reaction). Murray felt soooooooooooo guilty but we thought it was best to stand our ground and stick with the decision, despite the fact that the movie had already been picked out, paid for & brought home. Lovey was the most upset since it was her week to pick and she would have to miss it.

The grief party lasted for awhile but I think we made our point. They realized they'd gone too far. Murray & I hated giving up movie night but throwing away that $2.99 (and it kills me to waste even THAT!) may have been a very good investment. Honey came out and apologized and Sweetie dressed up in a goofy outfit to try and make us laugh and lighten the mood. She knew they'd pushed it this time. She cracked me up but wouldn't let me get a picture so Lovey went back & put everything on the way she'd had it so I could show the blogfans.

The next day Sweetie was wiggly in her chair again, tipped it over and it made a cracking sound. Immediately I confiscated the chair & told her she'd have to stand at the table for the rest of the meal and all of Monday's. She wasn't very impressed and she didn't enjoy the stand up treatment yesterday but sat nicely at breakfast this morning!

Favour!

A friend of mine is trying to win a spot in this fantastic workshop and needs more votes! There's nothing to form or registration required and you don't have to sign up for an email list or anything.

Just go to

http://www.impulsephotographyblog.com/?p=3653

go to the poll at the bottom, select #8 and hit vote and you're done!

She's an awesome lady and the workshop is $1600 which she just can't swing right now. She worked really hard on her entry & it is cuuuuuuuuuuute!

Thanks everybody!