The Weekend and Mystery Solved!

What a weekend. In the best sense, of course.

Friday began it all with a fabulous shin dig at our place (if I do say so myself). I love having friends over who have already seen my house at its most pristine, who have already seen my hair in it's most beatific coif, and who when arrive for said event don't care what it or I look like. These are those types of friends who are, simply put, the best of company and conversationalists.

So, we had this pasta buffet (which, while making you use all four burners to get all the pasta done at approximately the same time, is actually quite easy to put together) and while I was trying to avoid preparing enough to feed an army, we so still have leftovers. Oh well. There are worse things. :)

On the other hand, throughout the evening and cooking, whenever we'd open the door, J and I were plagued by this incredibly onion smell from our fridge. As this meant a thorough inspection of the vegetable rotter...er...the vegetable crisper bin, I figured I'd handle it on Saturday.

Saturday came and went! I got to go to my book club, which was great fun being around oodles and oodles of empathetic estrogen, more great conversationalists, and a killer brunch prepared by this month's hostess. Holy cow, it was yummmmmy (and talk about setting a high standard). Truly, I felt like a renewed woman when I dashed off to get home to put Miss O down for a nap whilst J took the older girls to a birthday party, empowered by consensus and knowledge that I was not alone in the world (and we actually discussed the book for about 10 minutes).

I was later joined by more good company and then later that afternoon...shock of shock...went and talked to several of our neighbors.

Anyone who knows me, especially in my current condition, knows that I am a HERMIT whilst carrying a bambino. Seriously. I need and love my existing circle of friends (see above comments about book club!), but have NO desire to enlarge it. So, poor J, who became our little neighborhood's H.O.A. President for the simple reason that he wanted to get to know these people is, alas, burdened right now with someone who...well...doesn't.

But, Miss A is all about riding her bike and Miss E enjoys trolling about on the tricycle and Miss O...for crying out loud, likes to take to the side walk at a streaking run before biffing it (inevitably) because her tiny legs get going so fast. It was such a nice day, we had neighbors out to meet and greet, and let's not forget the other little 5 year olds girls who were also outside. Suffice to say, Miss A was in HOG heaven. We eventually had two other neighborhood little friends over and Miss A promptly took them up to her bathroom and gave them a make-up make-over. And...well...

Yegads.

I hope their parents will still allow me to be part of the carpool this fall. The rouge was sooooo thick and applied in such a square-like unblended fashion, it really was a sight to behold. They were so proud of themselves, too! It reminded me of my first time using a curling iron, which I used backwards and ended up with an unnatural strange crimp in my hair. But I didn't care. I looked H.O.T. Oh uh-huh. Anyway, I was able to gently put a kabosh on dressing up in all of A's Sunday dresses so they could be princesses, because seriously, I'd have had to wash all of them because of the imprints from their newly adorned faces. Ohhhhh, to be five. Sigh. Oh well.

Meanwhile, after all those festivities, I decided to examine the fride. The onion smell became even more intense, so I went through the Rot...er...Crisper and found some green onions that didn't look terrible but must have been giving off the offensive odor (right???) and chucked them. I also put in a new box of baking soda. Quite the Domestic Queen, eh?

Sunday brought about it's own little bit of craziness as we attended the first hour of our church services (it was Ward Conference and, of course, went over by AT LEAST 15 minutes. It was also a surprise to attend our ward because I thought we weren't but J was like, sure, we should go. Oh. Okay.), and then dashed off to the First Baptist Church where the girls attend preschool because they were singing at this service. Miss Rene, the girl's preschool director, told me that Pastor Dewayne starts PROMPTLY at 10:45 every Sunday, and she wasn't kidding. When I got there, luckily friends had saved us a seat (albeit the in the second row, which turned out to be great because of the view of the kiddos), and I was still standing, trying to skooch the girls over when this booming voice began to welcome us. STARTLING!

The girls sang their songs within the first 10 minutes and they were sooooo cute! I love watching little people sing. They sang this song called, "Oh What a Miracle Am I," and "Zaccheaus" (from Luke 19), and each of these songs had a bit of groove to them and you should have seen these 3-5 yr olds shaking and shimmying. SOOOOOOO FUNNY! In fact, Miss E called me on it and said she saw me laughing. I told her I wasn't laughing AT them, but my heart was so full of joy I couldn't contain it. And that was true. I also had tears coming out of my eyes, I was trying so hard NOT to laugh, but I was sooooo proud of them for being up there, singing and moving their little bodies as best they could. I had several good congregates tell me that my girls did a great job and had good rhythm.

We had a lovely lunch with some other preschool parents who go to church with Abigail and school with her, too, (well, they don't but their children do) and I got to have a fun visiting teaching visit (As a note: I'm so sorry Madelyn! I'm the worst V.T. companion right now!!!! Again and again, I'm so sorry!!!!!!), and then we took the kids down to J's sister's house to get Miss O acclimated for when J and I have our Great Adventure (a post for another time). It was a busy day.

But that's not all! After grabbing a quick nap on Sunday, when I emerged, Superman J asked me to smell the fridge. It smelled about 1000% better! He'd found a smallish bag of what had been cut onions. The culprits of the stinky stench, apprehended at last!! Now, our kitchen just stunk. So I put it the mess into another Ziploc bag and chucked it into the garbage. Alas, by this morning, though, I had to escort the whole thing OUT SIDE to the official garbage, it had gotten so strong. Whooowee! There is nothing like overwhelming onion to put you off of that particular food item for a while.

So you see, Gentle Reader. It was a happy weekend, overall. Hope yours was just a great. :)