Best laid plans

You know what they say about best laid plans...yeah they never end well.

We've been sick, like annoying upper respiratory illness sick. It sucks and my house just feels icky despite constant cleaning.

We did manage to get out a little last week despite the sickness that infected our home in the later part of the week.

Josh and I went to the zoo. He wanted to see the meerkats. I used to worry about gathering up all the kids for outings but now I realize there is nothing wrong with just taking one child someplace special. So Josh and I went to the zoo, we had lunch together and laughed about monkey butts. We watched the lazy otters sleep and were unsuccessful in our search for the elusive sloth. Most important was we had fun together.

Hannah and I managed to go shopping. What girl doesn't love to shop? Actually she hates shopping but she had an inkling that cheesecake was in her future. Anyhow this was the boring kind of shopping. We needed dog food, some bread, kitty litter, laundry soap (yeah I know I need to make my own), and toilet paper. Real exciting shopping. We did get cheesecake though so the trip was a success. Hannah and I both love listening to loud music in the car so there was a lot of that too.

Another highlight was a mini mission we hosted at our house. We are mormons so missionary service is important and kids learn young to sing the song "I Hope They Call Me on a Mission"which is really irrelevant but it was the first thing that popped in my head. It was a fun activity that had the youth aged 12-18 receiving mission calls to various countries and then headed out to host homes to share a meal and a spiritual message.

Silly me thought it would be fun to host a group of kids, it slipped my mind that I had four children of my own that needed to be at four different homes throughout the city all while preparing a meal. After a little fanagling I managed to get all the kids to their various host homes and also managed to prepare a tasty indian meal. It was a wonderful night, we had three lovely young ladies at our home. None of them had ever had indian food before and they seemed to enjoy it. We had jasmine rice, lentils, naan bread, chicken curry, and an eggplant and tomato dish with veggies fresh from the garden. The food was wonderful as was the company. My kids visited "Korea", "Calgary", "China" and "America" and all enjoyed their experiences.

Here is the recipe for the chicken curry, it's a simple crockpot meal and to make it easy for a quick night meal I cut up my chicken before throwing it in the freezer. http://tastykitchen.com/blog/2011/03/slow-cooker-coconut-chicken-curry/

And here is the recipe for the eggplant, I read the comments though and sliced my eggplant into rings before cooking it, I like my eggplant with a little more shape. http://allrecipes.com/recipe/indian-eggplant---bhurtha/

Four of us were able to visit our local community fest, we listened to some polka, fed a llama, learned about owls, ate some fries, and saw some police vehicles and wondered why exactly we need assault vehicles in our sleepy town. Our visit was short though because we realized we were not feeling too hot.

Hoping that this week will be a little more exciting, with less sickness and more outdoor time. I have a bunch of tomatoes that need to be cooked into sauce and canned. The kids are thrilled for the start of our homeschool co-op later in the week. And the weather is supposed to be toasty tomorrow so a beach day might be in order.