Just a small group of us this Tuesday, nine adults (one was a new face to the table, a dancing friend of my parents), the tween, the toddler and one baby. Rest assured my children as usual provided plenty of noise to fill in for any lack of conversation (they are both teething at the moment and not taking it gracefully).
Dinner reminded me of a meal that we would have for Christmas. There were lasagna rolls, meatballs and Italian sausage, peas and carrots lightly sauteed with brown sugar, and sour cream white bread. Dessert, dessert was decadent (I thought so, do you all agree? I know you are reading). Mom made chocolate pizzelle cookies and layered them with a sweet mascarpone, cream cheese and whipped cream filling with chocolate chips (very similar to cannoli filling), drizzled with homemade fudge sauce and topped decoratively with a little of the filling and pistachios.
My oldest daughter had made place tags and put them on everyone’s glass. She also presented us with a game.
Can you say prayers?
WAIT! I have my game!!!
Ok, what’s the game?
Well, its… (she got distracted somewhere here)
C’mon, today, we are hungry!
Ok, so there are little pieces of paper under your plates, and they either have a Santa, a penguin or nothing on them. Whoever gets the Santa gets dessert first, then the peguin, then everyone else.
(Everyone starts to look under their plates)
NO PEEKING!!! You have to wait until AFTER dinner when you clear your plate.
Great, say prayers.
Bless this house, Lord we pray, keep us safe by night and day. Amen!
Where is your husband? Isn’t lasagna his favorite?
Yeah, it is, but he has to get up at like 3 AM to go to work so, he’s sleeping.
What better than a full belly of lasagna to help you sleep?
Right? Just ask Garfield.
I’m sure he would love to be here. It is his favorite.
He’s just chained to the radiator.
The car radiator or the house radiator?
I guess that depends on how mad he made her.
Ha. Ha.
You’re pretty quiet tonight.
It’s good, its a good thing.
Hungry are you? Waited to eat all day?
Yeah, something like that.
You know, you have a husband who I hear is a pretty good cook.
I just need to convince him to come home and cook lunch for me.
This is the last of the Frankenmuth wine.
No! Is it really?
Guess we are all going to Frankenmuth for a wine trip.
Except they won’t have this one anymore, it is like 9-10 years old from when she used to work there.
You know, you threw down the gauntlet with your Christmas lights, next year we are going to have to go bigger and brighter.
We threw down the gauntlet? Wait till we do the big tree.
But we are going to need a lot of lights, and something to raise us up there to get them done.
It’s going to be like a thousand dollars of lights to do that tree. If we ever go to sell the house, it will have to be one of the features. Here look at this beautiful tree!
And the LED lights still have a three-year warranty.
You could climb the tree to get them up there.
Or we could use the Ewok bridge!
(I have to segway here a bit because I totally did not add what may have been the best part of last Tuesdays’ dinner. We were talking about the large porch my parents built, but when they moved into the house Dad talked about putting in a tree house in a tree that is near enough to the porch a little bridge or zip line is very possible. From there the comment was made that we could build several tree houses between the two properties and dress in fur and be Ewoks. I about fell out of my chair laughing.)
The Ewok-walk.
You know you forgot to mention the Ewoks in your last post.
Oh my gosh, I did.
Here’s a picture of the roof we’ve been working on.
Squirrel!
That is a lot of snow.
We had to shovel it all off before we could lay any more metal down. We got shut down by the safety person before we could lay anything down today.
I bet.
So, if you can’t remember any of what’s going on tonight you can always read the blog?
What?
She puts all this down on a post on her blog. That’s why she isn’t saying much she is mentally recording everything.
So be careful what you say….
Squirrel!
What’s with the squirrel?
Just something funny, you replace a random word with squirrel. Lightens the mood at work.
Sure, so you change words in a song, or sentence, like changing girl to squirrel.
It’s all about the squirrel.
Have you heard if they were able to save any of the animals from the Gatlinburg Aquarium?
No, I can’t imagine how they would evacuate the animals.
I heard they evacuated it but didn’t hear if they got the animals out.
That would be a challenge, it wouldn’t be like mammals they could tranquilize and throw in a truck, there is a lot more transportation and maintenance issues with water creatures.
Hopefully, they are ok.
I hope so, there were a lot in there, big stingrays and things like that. (Side note here, I just did some looking and all the aquarium creatures are safe)
It’s really amazing, but kind of sad too, to see animals confined like that.
It is sad, I know some zoo’s and things try really hard to re-establish populations, but then what habitat is left to release them into?
True.
I heard it was two teenage boys that started it.
They admitted to it.
I guess they are going to try them as adults.
Well, they should. I hope they don’t just get a prison sentence, though, that wouldn’t do much in my opinion.
Right? We would just have to pay for them to sit there too.
Twenty years of community service would be a lot better.
Make them more remorseful actually, see what they did and have to clean up their mess.
Don’t forget to look for your papers! And no, I don’t know who got what.
I got a Santa.
I got a Penguin.
What did you get?
I think there is a piece of a candy cane?
Yea, but its a blank one, I just cut off a piece of a Santa by accident.
Mom, what did you get?
I didn’t get a sheet of paper.
Yes you did.
No, I didn’t, unless the one over by the baby is mine.
That one is yours! What’s on it.
Nothing.
Oh, who go the Santa?
Dad did.
I wanted to take pictures of dessert.
Can you hand her the camera? Where are your sisters?
Here, they are over there.
Thanks
Did you get your tree done?
Yep, its behind the fence and decorated.
Behind a fence?
We have our fireplace fenced off so the babies don’t get in it, well I just extended it all the way across the room so they can’t touch the tree either.
They don’t touch the tree here.
Well, they have more undistracted supervision here. And there are more of you than there are of me.
We used to tie our tree down because the cat would climb in it and knock it over.
We had a cat that used to sleep in the tree all the time. Who was that?
Dutchess.
That’s right. She never knocked anything over, but you could see her little eyes peeking out through the branches.
We had another one that ate the tinsle too didnt we?
That was Dutchess too.
(Meanwhile tiny paper airplanes from the game are now sailing around the table. The toddler is standing on a chair, squealing with amuzement at the concept.)
We used to have rubber band fights.
What?
Kinda like Nerf guns, but we used rubber bands.
I think we even made them guns at one point. But I could get three rubber bands on one hand.
We had to be quick as children.
We made amour out of sleeping bags and everything.
See this. (This is a video of my parents dancing a Pasa Doble)
Wow, impressive.
I didn’t know you could jump like that.
Now the Pasa Doble is more about the man. I was just the flag to the matador in this one.
Most dances are all about the squirrel.
I like your dress.
Thanks, I made his jacket!
Wow!
Ka-noodle? What is a Ka-noodle? Because I am picuturing a large canoe shaped pasta.
Its a big dumpling like thing filled with (stuff) and simmered in a broth.
Well that sounds good.
I’ve never really liked dumplings.
It depends on the recipe, mine are pretty light and fluffy.
I’ve never had a fluffy dumpling.
What about spatzel?
(Yuck face)
Really? I make a good spatzel.
I don’t ususally care to much for German food. Occassionally a Saurbraten or kraut.
That’s why, by the time you’ve eaten the soured things the rest is just there.
By the way, what are we having for your birthday next week Mom?
The Tuesday Table 