What's for dinner?

MSV and her sweet hubby R are arriving this afternoon for a long weekend. I am so excited. We have a lot of great plans including going to the scout spaghetti dinner fund raiser, watching the superbowl, and having a couples race through the stock yards human maze because we watched them do it on the Amazing Race and MSV and I are BIG fans & anytime you put any two boys from our family together there is automatically a competition of some kind, never mind that both these boys are imports to the family! At least we're not playing lets see who can burp the loudest, or who can make the biggest belly flop, or my favorite who can suck a noodle up their nose and out their mouths the quickest. We are nothing if not a classy bunch.

Tonight I am making dinner for everyone, which is normally so not a big deal. I cook for an army every day, and I am completely desentizied to criticism. But I wanted to make something nice. Some thing that says "move to TX, it's really the greatest place ever, and it would be so great to live by us and have the cousins grow up together" but at the same time I didn't want to run the risk of false advertising. We are boring and our food isn't always good, and our laundry room more often than not has a strange smell in it so I couldn't make something that says we are classy or fun. I ask a lot of my food, it's more than just nourishment it's also an encrypted message. Corn dogs for dinner = I have had a long day. Chocolate anything= I love you. Fish= lets be healthy and have a long life together. Apparently boiled chicken= I have no regard for your feelings. Pizza = see I am young and hip. And the list goes on. So what to make. Something warm and welcoming, but not pretencious and showy. No promises but lots of hope. What oh what to make. I literally spent several days thinking on this.

The winner: Cincinnati Chili (with just a sweet hint of chocolate and cinnamon but also a hot kick) served over spaghetti with garlic bread, salad and homemade molten chocolate cake.

Today was my day for preschool. This week, was my week actually, we studied reptiles. My house is still a post preschool disaster site and I have raw ingredient's for dinner and little time so what am I doing?
In my defense I set the timer and gave myself 10 minutes. I have one left so I will share a quick antidote. You can decide if it's amusing or not.

Tuesday we were sitting down for preschool snack.
I reminded the boys to wait for the prayer. The snack was chips and queso. As crumbs fell from their mouths and little cheese covered hands quickly folded in front of their plates K said "yeah or we will be eating cursed food."
E said "no we won't, food isn't cursed only pirates get cursed."
K "yes it does, my mom told me. My mom knows everything. "
E "no she doesn't only Heavenly Father knows everything."
K " my mom and dad know EVERYTHING"
E "ONLY HEAVENLY FATHER KNOWS EVERYTHING"
E "Right mom?"
K" Sister U does my mom know everything?"
me taking a deep breath, well guys it's important to pray over our food to show our gratitude for all our blessing (the old distract them with something else ploy...that never works)
K&E "but who knows everything?"
Me "Heavenly Father knows everything and moms and dads know a whole lot of stuff and we should always listen to them (sorry Nikko), let's pray"
Still unsatisfied they bowed their heads. Ryan prayed.
Everyone dipped into the cheese except K who said "my mom and dad know everything" and E who responded "nuh uh, only...."
Then I turned on our Primary Program CD and thankfully all the boys started singing loudly and forgot about who knows everything.

I can't always outwit but this time I outplayed!