December 3, 2008

I have been missing some funny happenings around here lately and I hate when that happens. Today we spent the morning at the play area at the mall. We had planned to go to the jumping place but it was closed. We met up with my friend who has the twin girls and we all had a fun time together. The kids played and played and my friend and I were able to visit and relax. We all had something to eat, rode a couple of escalators for fun and then went to see Santa.

The boys had been to see Santa one weekend with the dad. I think Nick stood in front of Santa and Ben was much further away. Since then, they have seen him from a distance several times and we have read some books about him so this time they wanted to sit on his lap. It was very cute. They both told Santa what they wanted for Christmas, which was anything they could think of at the moment. Nick said a truck and Ben said a tractor, which they already have. Santa gave them a little talk about picking up their own toys and not expecting mom to do it so I was ready to ask Santa what he wanted for Christmas. I thought that was very nice:). They got to pick either a Santa hat or small coloring book out of Santa's basket and they both picked the hat.

Then one of the twins wanted to see Santa but the other one was scared so I took the one who wanted to see Santa. She didn't want to sit on his lap but she stood in front of him and let him hold her hand. A little later, she wanted to go again and sit on his lap so her mom took her and she sat on his lap.

By the time we left Santa, both girls had the coloring books and both boys had the hats AND coloring books. As we were walking to the elevator, Nick started waving his small coloring book back and forth, fanning his face, and he said, "Whew! I hot! Whew! I have flash!" or something close to that. It was clear he was imitating my response to a hot flash, of which I still have too many. I found it laugh-out-loud funny though. Too cute what they pick up and a bit scary really.

Sometime last week, the dad decided to grill some chicken on the outside grill. It was freezing cold outside, so I wasn't very excited about the idea. I found very simple instructions for grilling chicken and it is really delicious so we do this every now and then and we normally cook a bunch so we can make several meals out of it. It is very simple. You turn on only one side of the grill and then you put the chicken on the other side, so it is not over the flames. Then you close the lid and let it cook for about 45 minutes. Then you open the lid, brush on your favorite bar-b-que sauce, close the lid again and let it cook for another 15 minutes. Then it is ready to eat. This is for bone-in chicken with the skin on. The skin keeps all of the juices in the chicken. I think it is probably the juiciest chicken I have ever tasted, and the most tender. We normally cook dark meat though.

Anyway, so he has been cooking the chicken for 45 minutes and it is still not done. He got a late start putting it on the grill so I had already fed the kids because I knew there was no way they could wait that long. I was hungry but I was waiting with him so we could eat together and I knew the kids would probably want to eat a little more too.

Anyway, so the chicken had been cooking for 45 minutes and it was still not done. He had gone out to check on it and came back and told me this, right around the time that I was giving the kids something extra to eat because it was taking even longer than expected. I thought it was probably taking a lot longer to cook because it was so cold outside. He said he was going to turn on the fire directly under the chicken, so it would cook faster. I told him I thought it would burn if he did that. I was helping the kids and not paying a lot of attention so I was not sure what he did next and I just forgot all about the situation.

A little bit later, he again went outside to check on the chicken. When he came back inside, he said, "Well, the chicken is too burnt to eat". I said, "How do you know?". And he answered, "It's on fire". You might have had to be there for this to be funny but, the way he answered after everything we had already been through, it really had me laughing. He brought a piece in and it was really yuck. It was solid black and the crispy black stuff was pretty deep. We found that underneath that, there was still some juicy meat but it tasted like smoke.

I had a couple of other things to write about while the boys are taking their nap but I am falling sleep in my chair so I had better sign off for now.