Last week we had the realization that our Allison’s birthday was coming up and we hadn’t planned a party yet. This wasn’t a huge deal, since she’s was turning 4 and, well, she’s pretty easy to fake out. We also realized that we were going to HAVE to make a cake and, eventually, you know, eat it. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not anti-cake by any stretch, but we (by which I mean the Mrs HTF of course) have made a few birthday cakes over the years and we always end up with massive leftovers that only slowly get eaten. (except for the frosting – this part is usually gone by the evening after the birth of the cake, thanks to one of our kids literally LICKING THE TOP OF THE THING OFF.) Well, we decided that it would be fun to have some folks over to munch the cake and to hang out. Allison would think it was a birthday party AND we’d have a night of fun with friends. The perfect plan . . .
We picked a few folks that we wanted to get to hang out with and get to know better and made the calls. To our surprise, and I am usually surprised by this, they all said yes. It was only then that we figured out something, really, really, important. We’d picked 3 couples without paying attention to the number of kids involved. Minor oversight . . . until I did some math (dangerous) and realized that we had just committed ourselves to hosting 16 SMALL CHILDREN. Two of the families had 5 little people and the other brought 2, so with our 4 we suddenly had more kids bouncing around than my daughter has in her kindergarten class . . . and we don’t have a gym inside our house or an on-site nurse.
I was more worried than I let on, but it actually went extremely well. (although I think a few of the parents were a bit worried the whole time since their children were roving around our house and yard in a small herd of mischievousness) Unfortunately the kids were way too busy playing to eat much of the cake, so our party didn’t really solve that problem. But we did fake Allison out and she gleefully assumed the whole event was for her. The adults were only able to get through one wild game of Outburst, but that’s ok. I’ve learned that most folks only tolerate me in small doses anyway.
The kids ended the night without disturbing the structural integrity of the house OR spending any time in an ambulance, so we’ll call that a win. However, next time we have a get together I will do more math . . . earlier.
it to the supervising chef who was a pro helping both teams. She asked if we’d tasted it. “Um, no, but we smelled it.” She looked a little confused at my answer. Then she took a pinch of it and put it in her mouth. She then smiled and said, “how much Cayenne Pepper did you add.” I gave the same answer my kids would’ve given: “I don’t know.” She then told me to taste it. I did. Very quickly portions of my tongue turned into Little Flaming Taste Buds (good name for a rock band). The stuff was disastrously hot. She suggested a do-over, and I dumped it in the trash can . . . defeated. I called it my Dry Rub Dry Run. I thought my screw-up would be kept quiet until I turned around to see my boss with A VIDEO CAMERA! So I’ll probably get to relive that funness a few times. My second attempt actually worked quite well, and I was pretty happy with how the meat eventually turned out. By which I mean everyone who ate it survived. My team actually won the competition in spite of my involvement. So it was a fun night.
rock. Many of you know this already, but they play together in 
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This morning I received a great e-mail from alert reader Ken in Paris. (In his honor I won’t make any jokes about French Generals surrendering to my daughter’s preschool class on the battlefield) He sent me a 
5. Cheese Sticks (aka String Cheese - The Natural Food) – We may be unique here, but these handy snacks are almost never eaten in their entirety and it would be WAY too hard for the kids to get the leftovers into a trashcan. Instead they are simply dropped, but more often they are “stored” somewhere “for later.” We often find moldy remnants stuffed in dark mini-van crevasses.
At 10 years old, he thinks he’s Lex Luthor. Since he started to drool effectively he’s always trying to sneak, steal, and swindle. And while he may not yet be an investment banker or a third-world dictator, we keep trying to get him to follow a few rules. His most frequent offense is the sneaking of forbidden food. This would be a bigger problem if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s too lazy to hide the evidence and he’s a horrific liar, despite great efforts. We’ve caught him with a dozen granola bar wrappers under his pillow and he’s denied he had anything to do with them – he even challenged the existence of granola bars in the house at all (probably because he ate them all one afternoon). He’ll blame things on siblings and even act totally confused when the evidence is utterly conclusive that he’s the disobeyer of the parents. We always know when he’s out of sight for a couple minutes to assume that something is being eaten that shouldn’t be. 
You know how some questions kinda answer themselves. Well, I found one recently in the HTF mailbox that literally does just that (none of the words between the two lines are actually mine . . . they were all part of the “question” (air quotes intended)) Yep, I just did a parenthetical INSIDE of another parenthetical, DO NOT try this at home, kidz. Now, on to the question: