…and the Friday night before…
We started the weekend off with a trip to the Magic House on the only night that we can really tolerate it in our “grown-up low threshold for noise and hubbub while carting around our coats and hers” state. Friday night around dinner time the place empties out, and it gets progressively quieter as the evening wears on. Without the crowds there is no need to hover in such a close proximity with the kid lest she be swept away in the tide of 43″ people who alternate in their love for curving slides and sand play faster than, than…well, who am I fooling? My best analogy would be that of a four-year-old, and since that’s where I started I’ll leave it at that.
After crashing out that evening we woke up and continued with our New Year’s Resolution to say “yes” to fun things that come our way, and “no” to the cleaning excuses. This resolution is made so much easier by the addition of a new family member, our robotic vacuum. We’ve yet to name him, but we are open to suggestions. So while we got ready for our day’s adventures the robot took care of the breakfast crumbs. Lovely.
We then made a run through Starbucks because apparently I’m also trying to break some sort of record by going through five gift cards in less than one month. I’m doing a sporting good job of it so far. After fueling up with the black stuff we met E’s best friend and his mom and watched a spectacular show that the kid’s been talking about ever since. I could have watched this performer again, right there. Following the show we went to Fitz’s for some ice cream and then hit a few specialty groceries for some ingredients for our dinner party tonight. Getting to these stores was no easy feat – with the shutdown of our city’s major central artery for the next four years, all of the secondary roads have gotten very busy around here. And on the weekends they like to blow up the bridges which block even these secondary roads, so our five minute trek turned into a forty-five minute one. The kiddo crashed out, but woke up in time to dash through three stores in thirty minutes in hot pursuit of the elusive egg wonton wrapper and some good olives.
Well worth the trouble, and delayed in our preparation, we prepared dinner as we visited with best friends. The kids played, the grownups chatted and cooked, and in the end we feasted on warm olives and marinated cherry tomatoes, salads, sweet potato ravioli (with wonton wrappers instead of pasta dough – who knew?) with cream sauce and then lemon curd tart and coffee for desert. It was so nice to get back into the old cookbooks and try out a new one.
Round two of the dishwasher just sounded, and the last picture is of round three which we will load in the morning. A messy kitchen is a sure sign of good food and conversation and a nice ending to an all around great day.
