A church Narnia Party... what a great idea!! I hadn't read the books since I was a kid. I was so excited. This was planned on only a week's notice, but we decided that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it well. A 4:00 movie and a 6:30 discussion afterwards at the church. We also decided that since it's over the dinner hour, we'd have to serve dinner or this just wouldn't work. A potato bar seemed the easiest, so Michael and I volunteered to bake off the potatoes and bring them in before the movie. We also made some Turkish Delight, which we'd never actually seen or tasted before. We made the Turkish Delight a few days ago, and as we were doing it, we noticed the recipe wasn't really written all that well. It calls for sliced up orange and lemon peel, but later you strain it out. Well, that seemed odd for Michael, so he zested an orange, lemon and lime and then chopped the zest super fine. Ok, no problem. Later, as we're measuring and adding all these ingredients, Michael noticed that you never really add the other half of the water. It says to use a cup and a quarter of water. Use half of it to bring the mixture to a boil, but the other half never actually appears anywhere. Strange. Well, I was expecting this to be a hard candy, but as we're progressing through this, it seemed more like Knox Blox. So I told him where I'd add the cold water in Knox Blox, and he agreed this made sense. Chefboy had never made Knox Blox. I, however, had made them frequently as a kid, since my culinary skills ended somewhere in the Betty Crocker Junior Cookbook. The queen of amazing feats in the kitchen that don't really amount to "cooking."
Anyway, Sunday rolls around and we have the kids all hyped up. Michael's feeling a bit sick, but trudges on because we've promised all these potatoes, and because Matthew actually asked for prayer for him during the church service. Yes, Matthew. So I scrubbed all 95 potatoes, costing me a thumb, and race them in to Michael, who's doctoring them up and getting them in the oven. It took every spare minute we had just getting them washed and done after church and before this movie. Somewhere in the middle, I decided we really needed whipped butter. Fabulous! So as soon as things were under control, I yank out the 80 pound KitchenAid and 3 pounds of butter and start whipping away. Well, not really, because the butter was still too cold. I stuck it in the microwave to soften it when Chefboy pokes his nose in there and tells me to use the paddle. No big deal to him, he finds it a challenge to dirty every pan and utensil we own for each meal he makes. I had already used the whip and knew the microwave would work just fine, so there was no way I was going to dirty anything else. I turned around to mock him in the air a bit and found that he was still watching. I quickly turned around and got the paddle. So we had the butter, we had the Turkish Delight, and he was tossing potatoes in the roaster as Mom and I were finding everyone's shoes and coats. We throw everything in the car a tear off toward church. We spun into the parking lot like Mr Incredible in his big RV, and I hollered to Mallory to see how they were doing. "Super-Duper, Dad!!" Matthew yells, "Do it again!!" Their favorite lines.
So we finally make it to the theatre. Not too bad, only about 10 till. We see everyone from church there and we're really getting excited. The line moved along okay and we're weren't all that nervous until the usher comes out and says that it's packed. What looked like about half the church was still in the lobby and was turned away. I guess about the only thing we forgot to do was reserve a block of tickets.
So, not to disappoint the kids for the rest of their lives, we went to the Movie Gallery to take something home. After nearly an hour, we settled on something they picked, The Hobbit, and something for after the kids went to bed. We put theirs in while we came up with our own potato bar using the 11 potatoes that burned too much to take with us to the party. It turned out to be quite a feast. The kids put their movie back on while we cleaned up and got ready for The Hobbit. I was so excited. I hadn't seen this since I was a kid. Well, as the day dealt its final blow, I wasn't sure I could really handle any more. This wasn't The Hobbit so much as a bunch of Brits sitting around talking about The Hobbit. Grrrrr. We still had some movies from last week, so we put in Sky High, since we'd all seen the Fantastic Four about twelve times. Or, the Amazing Four to Morgan, who just can't seem to say Fantastic. Well, that was cute, we got the kids to bed and watched ours, which was a lot better than I expected. Ours had Jamie Foxx, so I almost went to bed without watching it, knowing what a constant foulmouth he is. Well, little did I know he gets killed halfway through the movie, so it wasn't too bad at all.
Well, so much for my weekend. I guess I better get started on today and see what's in store for me next!
