Sunday morning, Wes and I got up and went to the grocery store for a few last-minute ingredients. I needed some things for the gooey butter cake (which didn't get made, sadly) and Wes wanted to pick up some beer to put in the cooler that we were returning to Nick and Mandy.
Before we left, I worked very hard on putting together the potato salad for dinner, and Wes fried up bacon for the seven layer salad that was sitting in the fridge.
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| Boilboilboil. I bought the wrong type. D'oh. |
Once we got the food finished up, we spent most of the day just waiting. Nick had taken his Dad and Step-mother out fishing for the day and they weren't due back until that afternoon. Wes and I just relaxed and did things around the house until we left to meet at their place around five that evening.
Beer in hand and salads in arms, we rocked up for dinner.
Upon entering the house, Matilda came screaming down the passage telling us to come see, come see, come see. There were fish, lots of fish! Of course, she's not quite that coherent yet, so it was mostly babbling with "bish!" and "Daddy!" thrown into things.
Matilda, since she was itty bitty (not that she's much bigger yet) has always loved all things fishy. Live, dead, it doesn't matter. She loves fish. When we followed her to the kitchen with our culinary offerings, she opened the fridge wide, peeled back a few layers of Glad wrap from a tray, and started patting her dad's spoils of the day: a pile of stinky, freshly caught fish.
Naturally, because she had been playing with them, Matilda was equally stinky and not so very fresh.
Mushy and Leanne were in the living room in front of the TV relaxing (which means they were dead asleep when we walked in and only revived when Mandy woke them up). They'd been out late the night before, at a friend's wedding. They had not only gotten in fairly late, but had come home rather drunk, only to get up early the next morning to go fishing and drink some more. Poor things were pretty beat, but still incredibly, wonderfully welcoming and sweet.
We sat watching TV and playing with the kids with them for probably an hour or so while Nick worked on cooking up some sausages, steaks and chicken kebabs for dinner. Eventually, Mandy and Leanne snuck off with Kye and Matilda for bathtime before we ate.
Soon enough, it was time to gather around the table for dinner, drinks and conversation. Plus, Matilda eating her chicken kebab as if it were a piece of corn on the cob.
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| Salad? Fin. |
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| Potato salad? Also Fin. And very yellow. |
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| Mushy, Leanne and I were the first ones to the table. |
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| But Matilda was so hungry she tried to eat the handle of her spoon! |
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| So everyone else piled in soon after. |
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| My dinner, minus the cheesy bread that I also had. |
Dinner was really very good and went quite smoothly. After we ate (and after Matilda washed her very messy face all on her own), Leanne and Mandy put the kids to bed and left the rest of us to talk. When they got back, Leanne decided to turn in early (and I don't blame her!) while the rest of us played 500.
Mushy and Mandy paired up against Nick and Wes for the first game, while I watched in order to learn the rules. I quickly figured out that 500 is like Hearts in reverse, or even similar to Spades, so when Mushy and Mandy won and Mushy declared it was bedtime, I stepped in to take his place.
Not only did my shuffling impress Nick, but I did fairly well in supporting Amanda through the hands, so we ended up beating the boys by about 750 points. I bluffed Wes into going into the negative at one point (on which bet, we took all ten tricks in that hand) and we won on a No Trumps bet. Wes decided that I would be sleeping on the front stoop for such card sharkery.
About halfway through the game, poor Matilda woke up very unhappy. We learned a few days later that she was both teething and suffering from a few mouth ulcers, the poor thing. As soon as we finished with the cards, however, Wes and I scooted out the door. We didn't want to get in the way of Mandy and Nick while they took care of Matilda, and it was starting to get late.
Personally, I considered the night to be a success. Hopefully, meeting his mother tonight will go just as well!
