Super supper!

I really meant to take a photo of last night's supper, but was way too consumed with my role, so you'll just have to develop you picture mentally...

Mike and Emily's church sponsored a men's retreat at Maranatha, author Michael Wittmer of GR Baptist Seminary serving as the speaker. At Mike's invitation, Don, Eric and Mike K joined him.

So, knowing that Emily, Lea Anne, and Elizabeth have their hands full and would feel a bit overwhelmed by the weekend w/o dads, I made plans for last night. I asked Natalie's help and then told the girls that their kids were invited to have supper at Grammy's while they went out for supper.

So, from 6-9, Natalie (14) and I had supper and played and kept the peace with Jason (10 and of limited help), Nathan (7 and entertaining but way over the top stimulating), Boden (5 and excited to be with all the boys), Heidi (3 and really wanting to be read to for hours on end), Caleb (2 and strong and active and coordinated like a three year old with terrible twos mentality), and Logan (certainly and completely 2 and always wanting to do everything that Nathan and Boden and Caleb do).

I bought Valentine-themed paper serve ware, fixed mac n cheese (I'm not dumb!), cooked carrots for the token vegetable that I ate, opened cans of fruit cocktail for the token fruit that I ate, finger jello that saved the day a couple times throughout the evening and, after all, I got to send them home afterward, hot dogs which are classic kid food that a couple of them scarfed down. And, for the piece d resistance, Natalie made vanilla cupcakes that we frosted on the spot and sprinkled with their choice of junk -- colored sprinkles, chocolate sprinkles, green sprinkles, or red sprinkles.

While I did the dishes, Natalie read to Heidi and Jason tried to supervise the boys in the basement. Fortunately, the meltdown did not occur until my dishes were about finished. So, I ordered them all up to the living room, turned out all the lights, and turned on the little camping lantern Don got for Christmas. Then we all sat together on the floor and read stories. One more rescue with the finger jello, and we saw the headlights in the driveway. Whew! We made it!!!

This morning, I'm going with Liz and the boys to pick out yarn for the baby stuff. Yikes!!!