And now, in your weekend news...

What do weekends and race cars have in common? They both go by way too quickly.

This weekend for me was one filled with fun. We had the kids at our house, and that usually denotes a good bit of stress, but I've found that just a tiny bit of planning can make things flow much more smoothly.

Happy birthday Rose!

The kids usually arrive on Friday night. Right away Aspen informed me that it was her babydoll's birthday tomorrow. Although I was fairly sure this was a ploy to get some non-birthday cake (and maybe some miraculous presents), I decided to play along and be excited with her that "Rose" was turning 1 years old.

We started off on Saturday with an trip to McDonalds for an early lunch. One of the difficult things about extremely cold weather is that you can't go outside to get any exercise, so we needed another option. We invited my brother Jason along and we had a nice time chatting while the kids burned off some energy in the play place. I ended up eating apples and grapes, the only thing on the menu that I could order. We decided to invite Jason to dinner and the birthday party also, and he promised to bring a movie over later that night.

I think she decided to dive in headfirst.

We made a quick stop at the store to pick out a cake mix, some frosting, and some additional items for the night's meal (Cub isn't as bad as Wal-mart on the weekends, but still not pleasant) and headed straight home. I had decided to make slow bake barbecue chicken, so I had make my own barbecue sauce from scratch (most barbecue sauces contain corn starch). Once the chicken was in the oven, Aspen and I got started on the cake. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting was my favorite when I was a kid too.

The barbecue chicken turned out well, although really spicy due a healthy dose of cayenne pepper. Along with some mashed potatoes, bread and green beans we had a wonderful birthday meal followed by chocolate cake. I couldn't eat much of the dinner, but the chicken was moist and flavorful so it was very satisfying. I had dried figs for dessert.

Enjoying our night in.

After dinner Jason and Ethan played Lego Harry Potter before it was bedtime for the kids, and then we watched "The Social Network", which turned out to be very entertaining. All in all, the weekend was busy but very enjoyable. It just goes to show that we can do a lot of activities when the kids are here, it just takes time and planning to make it all work.

Bye, bye, weekend! See you in a few days.