Backtracking

We had an amazing weekend- for anyone who wasn't here, these are the highlights:

1) Saturday afternoon went on a date with J. Had AMAZING tofu soup and bi bim bop, followed by perfect fruit smoothies with tapioca pearls.
2) Drove back to my parents' house to pick up E, driving through multiple climate changes. Finally ended up on their hill, behind a car going TEN MILES PER HOUR up in the hill in the quickly piling snow. Occasionally they would wiggle their steering wheel back and forth to.. what? Get better traction?
3) Quickly threw Ernie in the car, and made one unsuccessful attempt to get out of their hilly street (with my mother's admonition to just spend the night ringing in my head.) Made another attempt and just barely made it up, in a cloud of tire smoke. We looked at each other and shook our heads, and made our way back down the hill to see if there was any room at their house for three more people.
4) Had a lovely, slow Sunday morning at my parents house. Their church is at nine, ours is at one. And I was released as Relief Society president last week, so no more early meetings. We made it back to our house in time for Ernie's nap, and I started the bread dough for Sunday's birthday dinner for my brother.
5) After church we made our way, food laden, back to my parents house (roads were completely clear by then). For his birthday, I made naan, chicken tikka masala, basmati rice, beef coconut curry, saag paneer (including making the paneer cheese the day before), and mango lassi. My other brother manned the blender for lassis, Dad made the rice, J and LoLo took care of grilling the naan, J and Dad watched over the tika masala, and Dad basically made sure I always had a clean cutting board. It was a very successful birthday meal- I've never seen my family SO full of food and still picking at the serving trays and leftover bits of mango and cheese! We had two cakes for dessert- one from my little sister, and one from a girl who just thinks the WORLD of our little birthday boy!

Happy Birthday, Bucket Boy!