Meatfest recap

it was the best ever!
but don't we say that every year? and every year it is pretty much true we had a great gaggle of folks attend and they all brought something yummy food items to eat and oddly enough for the first year that I can recall we had no meat leftover the next day, luckily the chicken leg quarters never left the fridge so David manned the grill early on Memorial Day & grilled those bad boys right up. As usual my panic was for naught & everything came together well at the end..except for my ugly pie which baked perhaps 10 minutes too long and just did not make it....

big man on campus

C's grand return to summer camp/daycare where he is beloved & looked up to by all....vaguely reminiscent of Norm's grand entrances on Cheers. He is anxiously awaiting for his bestest bud who will join him next week.

it's a lot to ask of a 10 year old

I have to go to school and work today and as luck would have it C has a snow day so I have been instructing him on some basic care taking methods for his father, just for today, just for a little while. MIL will be over later so I am not entrusting hubby care entirely on the boy but it did strike me that I can't ask this of the kid in any real capacity..it's not fair on his 10 year old self. Looking at the calendar Christmas break is fast upon us and I want to keep C as occupied as humanly possible during that time. Yesterday we were blessed with enough snow to sled and a great new neighbor who fed & kept a general eye out on C. Today I am going to call his old daycare and see if there are any spots open over the holiday break so he can spend his days with his pals there and I am going to take up some friends on their offers of how can we help as well to keep the kiddo busy, happy & distracted.

Meatfest 2010

our annual ode to all things meat was yesterday and we served up ribs, chicken, hotdogs, hamburgers, chicken & bbq pork to around 35 peoples ranging from a mere 11 weeks old to 40 somethingish. Tons of food and delish beer from Heinzelmannchen Brewery in NC and good time was had by one and all...well I had fun I hope everyone else did too. A sign of the times would be the party clearing out before 9 now that we are all grown up with kids that have bedtimes the parties do not go in the wee hours of the night like they use to although Pete did fire the grill up again around 9 for one more round of burgers & hotdogs. We know some really great people that I wish we saw more regularly and most definitely more than once a year!

the sleepover

-sleepover is a complete and utter oxymoron the boys got maybe 3 hours of sleep last night
-I did not get a whole hell of a lot more
-we need a bigger house preferably one that has a common area far away from our bedroom
-of course that lends itself to a whole host of other problems
-these kids can eat
-they are loud
-any pangs I may have about just having 1 child can easily be cured with a sleepover
-I have enjoyed the hell out of all the laughter & frivolity in the past 16 or so hours

might have to unfriend her

have a friend from college that I reconnected with on facebook and she rarely updates her status except apparently for now while she is on an annual 3 week holiday in Aruba! Who in the hell has 3 weeks of vacation and can afford to spend them in Aruba?!! not me dammit I may very well de-friend her this week

bestest of buddies

when C started school almost 4 years ago now we had to switch his daycare to one that would pick up at his school each afternoon. Once the first summer rolled around we decided to leave him at the new location for continuity and location purposes and quite frankly it is a larger daycare with more field trips and activities than the smaller one provided. He was not thrilled with the idea because he was the only boy in his grade attending the summer camp, after a bumpy start he managed to make friends with some younger & some older boys and he made due the next couple of summers. Until last summer that is when D came on the scene OMG a true "bromance" kidmance was born the boys were inseparable the entire summer. As D does not live in the same school zone they boys have been separated during the school year(and why we did not exchange phone numbers I am not sure but ah well we will this summer).
First day of summer yesterday....I was having car issues the plan was to have MIL get us when car was ready take C to summer camp & me to get car so we go to sleep in a bit yesterday. First thing out of C's mouth when he got up, even before he asked for food was(no small thing if you know my son)
I'm late I need to get to summer camp
And once we arrived at 10:30 the teacher was so happy to C as D had been asking every 10 minutes since he arrived where C was.
way too cute

my 15 minutes....

okay okay so more like 15 seconds!
Yup got to try the rare & ridiculously over priced Kopi luwak coffee yesterday and while it was just fine in the future I will stick with my Kona for a mere $7.99 a pound

lots to do this weekend

lots and lots my friends!
-I have a lab assignment due tonight by midnight, another one due tomorrow by midnight and a third one due by Tuesday at midnight. Plus I have to study for the lab practical on Tuesday and start organizing my notes to start work on the unknowns. I am kind of looking forward to that one we will get a test tube with 2 organisms and we will have to do all sorts of tests to figure out what microorganisms they are. Cool huh?
-Let's see school related I also have to write a short paper that is not due till the 14th but I would really rather not have to write a paper while we are in Chicago
-have to get ready to travel to Chicago
-work today & tomorrow
-would love to get a hair cut & a pedicure
-NEED to color my hair at the very least
-laundry because we always have a ton of it..where does it all come from
-Bourdain tomorrow evening!!! I am looking forward to a night out with friends
-and I am sure there are at least 1/2 a dozen things I have to do that I have not even thought about yet....

Grease is the word..

one of the benefits to working in a music store would be well the music! Saw the Grease soundtrack and decided it would cheer me of my rainy day blahs and indeed it has.
The film brought controversy to the neighborhood back in the day, there were 3 of us that were BFFs on my street and our mothers had collectively decided the film was not for our 10 & 11 years old selves. Except one of my school friends was having a birthday party and sure enough it involved going to see Grease and a sleepover(there were always sleepovers at that age) so my mother relented and let me go see the banned movie. It took quite awhile for the girls to get over my betrayal

the mommy club

I am not a member.
Well yes I am a mommy but I don't have mommy friends or rather friends I acquired by being a mommy. I have the full range of friends who just happen to be mommies you name it we are bio, step, adoptive, foster, trying to become a mommy and our children run the gamut from the newborn just home this week to the grown woman getting married next spring and seemingly every age in between.
I am friendly with the mothers of his classmates, baseball buddies, church friends etc we carry on conversations for the odd hour or two when we are thrown together but these are not ladies I am lunching or shopping with. It does not bother me per se , for the most part we have just surface sorts of things in common but the one time of year it bugs me is back to school I have no idea what his teacher is "really" like and no one to call and say hey what do you know about so & so what sort of teacher are they?
That being said meet & greet went just fine in fact rather quickly as the new teacher was not particularly chatty with any of the kids or parents. I suppose we'll see. Ran into some kids & parents we knew unfortunately C is only in class with one boy he knows from kindergarten but he makes friends quickly so I am not concerned about his social life. Curious to see what sort of homework he gets this year that will be an adjustment for him. Again I suppose we'll see what this year brings.

girl's night out hits the road

yes I got in touch with the girls up in Yankee land to organize a night out on the town, such as it is I'm telling you not much going on up in Danbury...
So I had lost touch with hmm pretty much everyone over the years but we reconnected around the time our high school reunion was being planned it was the 15th? oh alright it was the 20th let's not quibble over a few years. The past few years we try to organize a girl's night out sometimes it works out others not and honestly this past Christmas I didn't let anyone know we were up, it was the holidays we had family stuff they had family stuff no big deal.
I hadn't given it too much thought till this afternoon while I was busy trying to look busy and I emailed the bunch of them got responses quickly and everyone seems game which is great. Unfortunately there has been a whole lot of what day and where? now I can pick a day but I have no idea of the where, I think Danbury is still a good locale for everyone but specifically where who knows?
C of course wanted to know why my friends were all going to be in CT at the same time we were

really out numbered

clearly an all boys night last night pizza followed by theTransformers DVD & popcorn I went to bed happily and left the boys to it all. Bedtime was about midnight I did get woken up for that and makes 5.30 a little rougher but I managed isn't what coffee is for?
The popcorn is an issue and it is an issue that amuses me. C's grandmother has turned him into a popcorn junkie I can't even walk past the DVD player and C is wanting popcorn. She generally buys cheapo generic stuff and frequently sends him home with a packet or 2. Last month I thought I would be nice and bought some of the "good stuff" just Orville Redenbacher-and is it just me or is it creepy they have started using him the television ads again he is dead and all-C did not like that at all and can you please buy something else mommy? ask mee-maw what she buys. Luckily we had one of the brand-x packets left for last night would hate to embarrass the boy in front of his buddy well at his first sleepover anyway we have plenty of time to be embarrassing parents...
and so I slipped out of the house and escaped to work leaving 3 snoring boys & a dog who my guess is started snoring shortly after I left.

the sleepover

so C's buddy is the grandson of the couple next door.
He is older maybe 5th grade I think-
each time I look at him all I can think is oh good an older friend to buy C beer when he is in high school