Exhaustion

I should be in bed sleeping and for some reason I find myself watching TV on Hulu. I figured while I'm sitting here anyway I can go ahead and write this.

Well, I'm redder than I was yesterday. I wasn't outside that long, but I guess it was enough to add to my burn. Unfortunately I don't tan. I just burn. I go from white to pink to red. But anyway, on to where the exhaustion comes from.

I woke up at 7, took Angel to school, took a nap, got woken up by Lizzy texting me that she was coming and I'd better be up, got dressed and ready for the day, met up with Liz, went to the party store to get fish (plastic) and candles, the bank to make a deposit and get cash, "Little Mexico" (local Mexican store as we call it) to get talapia, and back home to throw two cakes in the oven.

After the cakes started baking I worked with Peter to try and figure out domain name stuff, worked with Liz to setup a website, pulled the cake out and found (too late) that one wasn't done, put in another cake and continued to help Liz with the web site. Kids came in to (excitedly) tell me that the cake was cool, went in a cut down two 9x13 cakes, sliced a box of Breyer's Strawberry ice cream, layered cake and ice cream and covered it with blue icing, covered the cake with fishies and candles, and threw it in the freezer.

Back to the office to finish the site, actually (amazingly) got it to work, went to the garage to pull out all of the tent pieces that were scattered around, took them out to the lawn, set up four tents to see what we were dealing with (Lizzy was fantastic! She actually put up three tents in a skirt!), met with the poor lady who's in charge of girls camp and who was desperate for tents, lent her 3 of ours, helped her take them down and pack them into the car, and then I ran inside to change into something cooler and rest.

Except, then I realized it was time to make dinner. Megan wanted "fishy stickies" for her half-birthday dinner. (I mentioned earlier, she's celebrating 6 months early to get away from the Christmas birthday thing.) Anyway, fishy stickies is a dish I invented. Simple enough. Talapia pieces on a skewer, battered and then fried. So I had a brilliant idea: put all of dinner on a stick! Since I'm not a huge fish fan, I decided to use the peanut sauce I found at Target and make chicken satay with peanut sauce. It worked with the theme of dinner on a stick.

So I got Lizzy to start chopping orange cubes while I worked on the chicken satay and vegetables, then moved her to the apples while I stemmed maraschino cherries, started skewering fruit kabobs and let her keep going with those (thank goodness for Lizzy!) while I started skewering veggies, got the kids to do the veggie kebabs (it only lasted a little while before they took off), realized I was out of butter, sent Peter to the store for butter and barbecue sauce (according to Megan you can't have fish without barbecue sauce!), chopped the talapia and skewered it, got the grill ready, got the satay ready, got the tongs Pam serving plates and table ready, grabbed the butter from Peter when he got home and quickly made an herb and butter marinade for the veggies, got him cooking the veggies and satay on the grill, started cooking the fish, and Megan walked in and asked if that was all of the fish I was going to make becuase that's about how much she would eat herself.

Realized a pound of talapia and one chicken breast of chicken satay wasn't going to feed 10 people, hurried and microwaved two frozen chicken breasts, chopped and skewered them, and made another batch of batter while frying the talapia. Battered and cooked the chicken (ended up calling them "chickie stickies"), got the food out, found the family, and fed the family. It was actually good! They ate pretty much everything. I had to quickly grab a plate and fill it up for Angel (foster child/teen/whatever you want to call him) and hide it before they ate it all.

After dinner was presents and cake, talking and fun, scriptures and prayer, and cleaning up the kitchen. Gabe and Cindy (next door neighbors) showed up during clean up for cake. Had a nice chat with them (finally I got to sit!) while the kids disappeared. It's hard for me to make them finish the dishes and counters while talking to friends, and they know it. Well, actually, the responsible ones took off while the little ones chased each other around, bugged us, and made a lot of noise. Gabe and Cindy left at 11, I finished loading the dish washers and started them while Megan washed the counters, I hid from the kids, and started watching a show (and typing this of course).

So yea, I'm tired. I really should be in bed. Guess I'll go. Oh yea! I have to put the kids to bed! If I can find them that is. I think they're orbiting somewhere around here!

P.S. Peter just caught a very sticky two year old, put her in the bath, and the bath turned orange. Turns out she was playing in the office while I was writing this (which I knew) and got into Peter's drink mix (which I didn't know). It's time for bed!