Birthday Bash

Well, we did a little catering for our friends in Shen last night. It's been interesting juggling this into our week. You can only prepare food so far ahead! We were having a Christmas dinner here on Thursday for my brother who was up from Missouri, but with some pending Friday weather, Michael had to do his shopping that night. He was here for a few minutes between work and grocery shopping, so it is a little strange that the family pictures will show his presence even though it was momentary. Since he prepared for this pending storm, it decided not to show, but he was still pleased that he had all the food so he could be busy on it Friday while I was at work. It was pretty late when I got home and found out Matthew hadn't fed the outside cat, so I sent him out to do so immediately (yes, with stories of old where my barn was several yards away, with coyotes howling and my dad never gave me a flashlight...). He spent quite a while in the mud room arguing his point that he could be eaten alive and we had various arguments involving yardsticks and door locks. The next day, we found that one of his arguments involved smashing down several of Michael's tiny twice-baked potatoes with his finger. We could only smile. He tried to look like he didn't know what we were talking about, but he was too proud of himself. Michael rebagged his potatoes and gave them some more topper dots. At the party, Michael figured out that he had not grabbed his Gorgonzola potatoes (not sure... some kind of bleu cheese stuff that invokes the gag reflex), but rather Grandma Rose's really fantastic buttery mashed potatoes that she brought for Troy's party on Thursday. He figured it out because the first bite was really surprisingly good, before you got to the really nasty bleu cheese stuff. Oh, well. Kudos to Grandma Rose who makes the best mashed potatoes in the world. I suppose, unless you like bleu cheese...