Dinner with our priest

Brave little me decided to invite our parish priest over for supper this week, and it happened that he could only come tonight. He told me this yesterday, so I had to scurry around the house cleaning all day, while thinking of something good to make for supper besides our normal 'mom with five small children' fare ( chicken nuggets, tacos, pizza, pasta).

Here's a short summary of the night:

1. Father comes early... (AHHH! I"m not ready!!). The kids are giggling upstairs hiding from the doorbell. The babies are still sleeping. I"m trying to make homemade biscuits and pudding cake at the same time.

2. I try to entertain father while reading my two recipes at once (bad idea) and keeping tabs on the three small children running around loudly at my feet. Daddy isn't home yet (where is he??)

3. ooops, that was one TSP not one TBS of baking pwd..(scoop, scrape, dump)... uh, which bowl did the salt go into?... oops! (no problem, I can multitask, I have twins!)

4. Speaking of twins, baby 1 wakes up crying, while i"m trying to put the carrots and potatoes on, take the chicken out, roll the biscuits and stir the pudding cake. Oh, and there's baby number 2 crying now.

5. Snapdragon the toddler runs by with her shirt off.. (why is she naked?? Where is daddy?) The kids are climbing up a shelf to get at the pictures they drew for the priest.

6. Uh-oh... they knock over a statue of St. Joseph, and in the process, his head falls off (again, but that's another story). Why do these things always happen in front of the priest? I'm still trying to cook the biscuits and I ask E to bounce P for me because he's crying for milk.

7. Finally, Daddy is home!! yay! He brings father into the living room for some grownup chat, the kids go wash their hands and we sit down for dinner: Fresh baked biscuits, carrots, peas, mashed potatoes and Salsa-chicken. For desert, pudding-spice-cake. Little snapdragon is very happy with our guest, and continually tells him to 'Watch ME!!' and pulls on his arm to make sure he's actually doing it. When he leaves she says 'Bye Bye Water' (she can't say F yet).

8. He leaves with a smile, telling us he's encouraged to see a loving young catholic family... daddy was happy to have a nice dinner complete with tablecloth and desert, and the kids are still running in circles through the house giggling.

9. "we should do this more often", says Daddy.

"Right", I say. "after I have a few months to recover... and we get St. Joseph's head fixed".