Wonderful Weekend

I made Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon (or, as our Julia pronounces it, “buff borginoney”) on Friday, and we got snowed in on Saturday so Mom made sauce (the house smelled heavenly) and we stayed in PJs all day and watch movies and ate spaghetti and meatballs. I love winter!

 Here’s what we watched:

Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

My little pumpkin had her third dance recital. Cuteness abounded.

Everything was a blurry mess until I fired off a frantic text to Kris all, "Kristen! Quick! How did you show me to shoot action in low light?" Then everything was fine.

This one might be my favorite.

Nope, this one is my favorite.

The tap number required some swagger.

Curtain call with cousin Jordan.

Merry Christmas Eve

This one's for Jules...

A lovely cheese pizza, just for me. 

Fuller! Go easy on the Pepsi.

Kevin, what did you do to my room?

We're the wet bandits!

Buzz, you girlfriend. Woof.

Is this toothbrush approved by the American Dental Association? 

Why the hell did you take your shoes off?
Why the hell are you dressed like a chicken?

Keep the change, ya filthy animal! 

 

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

I've come here with a view of asking you to marriage me. I know
 I seems an insane person, because I hardly knows you, but sometimes things are so transparency, they don't need evidential proof.

Stateside I am Prince William, without the weird family.

All I want for Christmas is you.

Yeah, um, Mary, can we move the Japanese ambassador
to four o'clock tomorrow?

Now which doll shall we give Daisy's little friend Emily? The one that looks like a transvestite or the one that looks like a dominatrix?

NO! No bloody holly!

So if you believe in Father Christmas, children, like your
Uncle Billy does, buy my festering turd of a record. And particularly enjoy the incredible crassness of the moment when we try to
squeeze an extra syllable into the fourth line.

Well, this is a surprise. Ten minutes at Elton John's and
you're as gay as a maypole.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve

I'm the worst toymaker in the world!
I'm a cotton-headed ninny-muggins.

We elves try to stick to the four main food groups:
candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup.

You disgust me! How can you live with yourself?
You sit on a throne of lies!

You don't smell like Santa; you smell like beef and cheese.

Buddy the Elf! What's your favorite color?

Son of a nutcracker!

I just like smiling; smiling's my favorite.

Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve

Show Mommy how the piggies eat!

In the heat of battle my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space somewhere over Lake Michigan.

Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense.

Only I didn't say "fudge."  I said THE word. The big one. The Queen-Mother of Dirty Words. The "F-dash-dash-dash" word.

   

Bumpuseeessssss!!!!!

Football? Football? What's a football?

Schwartz created a slight breach of etiquette by skipping the triple dare and going right for the throat!

Over the years I got to be quite a connoisseur of soap.Though my personal preference was for Lux, I found that Palmolive had a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heavy, but with a touch of mellow smoothness.

It's a major award!

He had yellow eyes! So help me, YELLOW EYES!

To quote Miss Clairee, "You were brought up right."

So, I was in PA last weekend, which means spending lots of time cuddled up with Julia while she watches the Lord of the Rings movies on my iPad.

This never happened.

We get to the infuriating part where Faramir tries to take the ring from Frodo, and the following conversation occurs:


Ali: It's important that you understand something about this.

Julia: I know, I know. Mommy told me. This part doesn't happen in the book.


Well done, Jen. Well done.

Eyes peeled, ladies!

So, after the Strayers’ Labor Day picnic, five of us headed out for a round of The Wal-Mart Game. If you forgot, the rules are simple. Each team chooses ten objects, we switch carts, teams must return the objects to their rightful places, and then return to the finish line, in this case the display of corn on the cob near the produce section.

Team Zack/Kris upon our arrival. Note the time on
the screen behind them. Yeah, we're hardcore.

Team Liz/Lex/Ali, ready to go.

Things started out rough for Liz, Lex, and me. We found one item fairly quickly and then settled in for a long drought. We had seven or eight items left when we saw Kris and Zack and, to our horror, noticed they were down to one. They had even ditched their cart! Oh, the hubris! It looked as though a humiliating defeat, the likes of Napoleon in Russia, was in store for us. At that point our goal was just to get down to two or three items before Kris and Zack declared victory, so that we could at least hold our heads up on the ride home.

Some of the items that drove us mad: Cupcake jewelry (Yes, you read that correctly. As in jewelry to adorn cupcakes, not people jewelry that happened to be shaped like cupcakes.), a hose coupler that was NOT labeled as a hose coupler (or as anything else for that matter), and a bottle of mineral oil meant for the care of bamboo objects.

We were all over that store, to no avail. Once we found the pencil case in the cereal aisle (nice logic, Wal-Mart), we returned once again to the clearance aisles with their messy shelves and acrylic bins. Alexa growled, “Eyes peeled, ladies!” like a drill sergeant. It was past 2:00 AM and I was so over this game at that point that I began to tear the aisle apart like Marilyn Monroe looking for a Valium. I was certain Kristen had chosen something from one of the bins and then buried its twin, so I began to shake them like a British nanny. It must've been impressive because for a moment Liz and Lex just stood and stared at me and then Alexa took out her phone and began to film me. It was fate, for when Alexa turned off her camera, she looked up and saw the cupcake jewelry hanging right behind her.

And then we were on a roll. The hose coupler! The flag pole bracket! The Cinderella Lipsmacker duo with bonus keychain holder! When we finally found our final item, the bamboo oil, Alexa dropped to her knees on the floor of Wal-Mart and threw her arms in the air in victory. 

Then we hightailed it to the corn.

Victory!

Team Winner!

In the end Kris and Zack were undone by that one final item, a Batman keychain/pencil sharpener. Bruce Wayne can always be relied upon. It was the first item we picked up. Liz grabbed it off the shelf and said, “How about this? You probably wouldn’t look for a keychain in the jewelry section.”

Well played, Mrs. B. Well played.

Felled by the Dark Knight. Or at least his keychain.