Dining with 18

Time with family is always too short and not often enough.

Last time we were here,

Claire looked like this

Now,

She's walking, talking, mumbling baby talk,

Eating in a chair like the toddler she's grown to be.

If you don't know,

Jake's parents live in WA,

they have roughly five handfuls of children
(26- biological, adopted, grown, and still home)

An amazing story.

Read all about that here,

There was much deliberation going on in my head regarding

the subject of my post on my in-laws,

But I chose to do one on their meals.

This weekend, there were 18 mouths to feed.

We young Moms need time to be encouraged by our elder moms,

The master showing the apprentice around the Internet block.

We blogged with scrambled eggs under foot.

Because there's always time for an 'out of the house experience'

The two meals I chose to document were:

Pancakes and Sausage

&

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Waiting for flap jacks to be done!
Lauren Loves Sahvtah's pancakes!

My kids call Jake's Mom and Step-Dad

Sahvtah (Hebrew fro Grandma)

And

Sabba (Grandpa)

The three youngest boys convened in the kitchen

For their morning cuppa Moo.

A glimpse at breakfast:

This day, After breakfast,

We loaded about 1/4 of the weekend residents

In the good 'ol 15 passenger

And headed to Target.

Who doesn't love a good trip to Target???

Okay, Maybe Daddy doesn't,

But Lowen and Mommy could (and have)

Spent hours in the dressing room.
This time, she slammed her little fingers in the dressing room door,

Poor Babe,

And our trip was cut a little short.

A little.

You can actually see some of the scrambled eggs here.

I'll start out the days dinner by saying that the boys just weren't satisfied with

Spaghetti and meatballs.

Someone put a bug in the men folks ear that there were steaks to be had.

So Sabba cooked them up,

And they enjoyed a (1 lb each) appetizer

of steak.
I overheard Sabba say

"Thank you Lord for dead animal flesh."

A sincere and heartfelt 'amen'

was sent via testosterone waves among them.

It was in this moment,

the bellies experienced complete nirvana.

Not many words were spoken here.....

They (Daddy) were mostly irritated by my picture taking.
They'll thank me later.

All the while sahvtah sweats over the stove

For the other 15 of us,

Bum knee and all.

Some of the bowls lined up.

Some absolutely great action shots:

Down the gullet.

Spaghetti has no age limits in this home.

I have to give a shout out those baby blues.

Those puppies are all mine for now.....

Sahvtah and Sabba got a quick

Lightning flash of a moment together here,

Before there were dishes to be done and baths to be had.

Bath time,

Never a dull moment.
There was actually a million things happening in the picture below.

Some obvious, some not.

Obvious:

2 kids in bath

2 dressed kids watching bath,

You can see my boy Silas sitting there on the can,

Sahvtah blogging,

Not so obvious:

*Myhao ( below, Left) was feeding Jarib (right)

pumps of baby shampoo,

directly in the his kisser.
* One of the spectators (fully clothed) almost succeeds

At climbing into the bath

*Havoc is being had house-wide because the mommies are blogging/picture taking

The havoc was here,

You wont see a group of rougher boys.
This guy (Berhanu) always prevails,

Lauren corralled them all into a circle for an original story.

And last but not least,

The above picture is the fully clothed spectator who almost succeeded in

jumping in the tub.

He was exiled from the bathroom,

left to project his voice to the crack under the bathroom door.

You'l not see a funnier sigh than this one.

The real life version was to die for.

He was loud.

Everyone was alerted of his desire to get his all access pass to the party.

He never was invited back in.......

There is a zero tolerance policy here

When it comes to bathing with clothes on.

Sabba and Sahvtah's house is way too much fun for the kids.

The Peeps are always sad to go.

Tomorrow morning we saddle up at sunrise

For another 13 hour drive.

Lord willing, this time we'll have no sick pups in tow.

Vacation time well spent.

We love you guys!