Chock Full

This weekend is almost half over, and already I can tell it’s going to be another one of those “chock full” weekends that I need two days to recover from. We all had a pretty great day and all, but it’s barely 7:00 p.m. and we are beat.

Dennis and I always say we are going to sleep in on Saturdays, but without fail, one or both of us wakes up at about 7 and decides we may as well go on and get out of bed. Neck cramps, too hot in our room, a pea under the mattress–I’m not sure what it is, but there always seems to be something preventing us from being slothful like we often were in our youth. Today I was the early riser. I heard Danny slam into the bathroom and decided I would get up and keep him company so he wouldn’t be all alone downstairs. At least Dennis managed to sleep for another hour or so. And it’s a good thing, too.

Around 9:30, as Dennis was gearing up to get the lights on the tree, I headed out to do a few errands, including a trip to the grocery to get the ingredients for The Pioneer Woman’s Best Lasagna Ever. By the time I got back, Dennis and Ryan were already across the street in our neighbors’ yard, raking leaves. Our neighbors are a middling-elderly couple with a 2-inch-thick (at least!) layer of leaves covering their entire yard. He has some sort of back problems, I think, that don’t favor doing yard work, so last weekend we saw her out in the yard, all by herself, trying to take care of the leaves. We were on our way out to the tree farm that day, but Dennis vowed that we should all go over there and do a Christmas good deed ASAP before she killed herself trying to rake all the leaves herself. Anyway, it took 6 of us a good few hours to get the job done, but now their yard and ours both look great!

While Dennis and the kids were finishing up that job, I went inside and made everyone some lunch, then began preparing the lasagna for our dinner. OMG–this thing was humongous when it was done! I used the hugest casserole dish I own, probably 12 x 15, and it was filled to the brim and weighed about 10-15 lbs. I staggered from the oven to the table with it at dinner time, praying my arms would hold out long enough to get it there without disaster. We consumed only about 1/3 of it (and that’s saying something, because we have a big family) and rated it about 4 stars out of 5. It was really tasty, and there are parts of the recipe I think I will incorporate into my own usual lasagna recipe. But basically we all liked the version I usually throw together using jarred spaghetti sauce somewhat better than the totally-from-scratch version we tried tonight.

After I got the lasagna assembled and into the fridge, I set to work baking some of the Christmas cookies I had mixed up yesterday. Allie and Molly decorated them, and there were a few that were especially cute. At the top of this post we have a wreath, Frosty the Snowman, and a monogrammed cookie made by both Allie and Molly. Do they have some talent with the sprinkles, or what?

Meanwhile Dennis, not to be outdone by my continued industriousness, went out and put lights on our front bushes.!

We’ve now consumed mass quantities of lasagna, scarfed down a large number of sugar cookies and chocolate krinkles, and are ready to collapse. The youngers, who are supposed to be washing the mountain of dishes I generated today, are instead laughing as they use our Christmas Magnetic Poetry set to make bizarre sentences and funny poems on our fridge. I am done. I’m off to park in front of The Family Channel’s “Harry Potter Weekend” and watch Movie #2 in the series. Probably I’ll fall asleep at some point, but that’s not a problem for me!

Tomorrow: Choir in the morning. God knows what in the afternoon!