April 17, 2006

Easter Recap

It started off like this in the morning when the baskets were first discovered. My husband will not like this one bit, but oh well. . .

We then went to church where Lil C let EVERYONE know she can say "da da" and "ma ma" at the top of her little lungs.

And then we went to Mom-Mom’s house, where Big I had a great time on her solo mission egg hunt. Even Lil C got in on the fun, "finding" one egg and batting it down from it’s hiding location on the window sill. My husband got this great action shot of the hunt. . .

. . . and this picture of me and my girls since The Picture People failed to capture the pure adorableness of their outfits. Unfortunately, Big I’s bag is in the way of her skirt that matches Lil C’s outfit. (It’s always something!)

But, just when you start to think you have a fairly normal family, you have a holiday get together with the whole crew. Any illusion (or delusion) that you had of having a normal family is completely blown to hell. Let’s start with my sister’s boyfriend. . .

Let me preface this by saying that I like her boyfriend. I am, in fact, inadvertently responsible for them being together. (I told a friend my sister needed a boyfriend; she had a friend; we had them exchange email addresses; the rest is history.) He is a hard worker; he’s responsible; and I think that he loves my sister which is fine by me. (Let me just say here that he better love my sister or else I’m going to have to go all karate on his ass.) When forced to be around anyone for any length of time though, you start to discover the little oddities about them.

These oddities first were revealed on vacation last year. We spent a week at the beach with him and it was, well, interesting to say the least. My sister’s boyfriend is somewhat of a food snob as in: Orange juice from concentrate??? The nerve! This isn’t the only odd thing though. I wouldn’t even feel compelled to bring it up if it wasn’t for the fact that he called my daughter a "freak" because she didn’t eat the crust on her toast. But since he did, game on. The boy does not like: any kind of pasta, any kind of cheese, cake (yeah, seriously), ice cream (unless it’s from a dairy in Michigan), any type of tomato based sauce, anything that mixes two foods together, anything with cornbread or yeast in it, salad, fruit, and the most shocking of all. . . chocolate. Now, tack on the fact that he does not ever have an alcoholic beverage and you’ve got a teasing fest in the making.

Yesterday our menu included: salmon cakes, ham, scalloped potatoes, corn bake, salad, rolls, Easter cake, and red beet eggs. He ate. . . ham, lots and lots of ham. No seriously, like half of the ham. This is what he does. At Big I’s birthday party, we had pizza and cake and ice cream. We special ordered him a plain hamburger. On Christmas, we had seafood lasagna, and because my Mom felt bad knowing that would be a huge taboo for him (sauce, cheese, pasta. . . the horror!) she made hot roast beef for sandwiches. He ate five of them, in a row and nothing else.

Yesterday as I was serving the Easter cake (yellow cake, pudding and cream cheese mixture, pineapple, cool whip) I asked him if he wanted a piece. He said he didn’t like cake, so I cut him a small piece and told him to eat up. The man is in his 30’s for God’s sake. He can amuse the chef and eat a small piece without acting like a 4-year old. So, he started to eat it and wasn’t falling over from the sheer disgustingness of it, so I said to him, "You like that cake? You know what’s in that cake??? Noodles and cheese." I thought my husband was going to die laughing. The boyfriend chose to ignore me and needed a drink. "Is that tea out there diet?" he asked. "Yes, it is," I responded, "so that eliminates that as a choice. What do you want? A nice glass of meat juice?" I don’t think he found me very amusing, but how can you not find his eating habits amusing? His diet consists of meat, and white bread. Period.

While we were trying to coax him into eating, my grandparents were arguing about juice. This is what they do. My grandmother is 88 years old; my grandfather is 81. They are an absolute riot. My grandmother LOVES to talk. She can talk about just about anything and just in case you missed something, don’t worry, because she will tell you again from the start in exquisite detail. My grandfather is much more quiet. He doesn’t say much, but sometimes like a volcano under pressure, he erupts. It’s like he can only take so much of my grammom’s talking before he’s had enough. Whatever she happens to be talking about at the time will be the subject of the eruption. Yesterday, the subject of wrath was none other than juice. It went something like this:

Grammom: "I have cranberry juice at home. I used to have the stuff that was from concentrate. Now I have juice that is 100% juice. They don’t put sweeteners in it or anything. It’s 100% juice. It’s cranberry with raspberry in it."

Pop-pop: Nods, but starts to look a little irritable.

Grammom: "I like that juice. We don’t buy the stuff from concentrate. It’s really good. And, it’s 100% juice.

Pop-pop:(shakes head and talks through his teeth) "It does have other stuff in it. It’s got raspberry juice in it."

Grammom: (exasperated) "But it’s 100% juice, Herb." (says "Herb" as if it’s a dirty word.)

Pop-Pop: "I’m just saying it’s not 100% cranberry juice, because it DOES have other stuff IN IT."

Grammom: "I know HERB! It’s got raspberry juice in it. But it’s 100% juice!"

Pop-Pop: (mutters under breath and gives up).

A few minutes later, orange juice comes up.

Grammom: "I like my orange juice to have that stuff in it."

Pop-Pop: "It’s called PULP HELEN! PULP!"

Grammom: "I know what it’s called Herb!"

Pop-pop: (as if someone just said something negative about where he buys the juice) "We buy our juice at Weis markets. We buy Weis brand. It’s the best. It’s got lots of pulp in it. You don’t have to buy fancy orange juice."

My grandparents are funny in that they have strong opinions, but on just about everything. Politics, check. Orange juice, oh you better believe it. During Big I’s solo egg hunt, my grandmother was telling us how you just never know what’s going to happen these days, and because of that she stores jugs of water in her basement. She uses old milk containers, wine bottles, whatever she can come up with. My grandfather patiently waited for her to relay her story and then said, "Yeah, she’s got so many jugs of water in the basement that if I trip and fall down there, I’m liable to drown." She’s the storyteller; he’s the one-liner. It always makes holidays interesting to say the least.

Now, go make yourselves some meat sandwiches (no condiments allowed), drink some 100% juice, and say a little prayer that if my sister does get married to this guy, the wedding reception doesn’t have a ground beef cake.