The all-you-can-eat meat spectacular

After a busy week at the Evans household, Ryan and I thought that a quiet weekend at home was in order.

But then, on Saturday morning, as Ryan ran down to the basement to get English muffins out of the freezer for Austin's breakfast, he made a startling discovery. The English muffins weren't frozen. In fact, they were completely thawed. Which quickly led him to discover that most everything in the freezer was either partially or completely thawed.

What happened you ask? No, our freezer didn't die, nor did it accidentally get unplugged. Instead, one of the kids turned the knob on the compressor all the way to zero. And when you do that, it shuts off. By the time we discovered that the deed had been done -- 24 to 48 hours (we think) had gone by.

Most of the meat was thawed but still cold -- a select few items that had been squished between other items were actually still frozen. Bread was soft, frozen vegetables were not so frozen and popsicles were well -- liquid.

Once we finished taking stock of the freezer and throwing out what was unsalvageable, we had the following items that were still edible but couldn't be refrozen -- 15 sausages, 2 pork tenderlions, 4 pork chops, an unopened box of M&M lemon pepper chicken, 4 souvlaki sticks, a-2kg bag of chicken wings, a box and a half of spring rolls, 2 steaks, 2 racks of ribs, 2 chicken breasts, 5 chicken thighs, 5 homemade hamburgers, 2lbs of ground beef, 3lbs of bacon, 2 packages of hot dogs, 3 loaves of bread and a loaf of chocolate zuchunni bread.

So, we did what any sensible people would do when faced with the prospect of losing all that food or having to eat it all in hurry. We threw a party.

At just after 10 a.m. that morning, we called up some people to see who was free that evening to come to our all-you-can-eat meat spectacular. Responses to said question ranged from "you had me at all-you-can-eat", "you had me at meat" and "hell yeah".

Dinner consisted of five courses -- four of which were meat (the fifth was dessert). The first course was spring rolls (ok, not meat) and chicken wings; the second was ribs; the third was sausages and the fourth was chicken breasts, souvlaki sticks, steak and pork tenderlion. And yes, we did mix in a few veggies for variety -- I served veggies (from our garden) and dip and someone brought a salad.
Our friends did us proud and there are few leftovers in the fridge. Well that is, except for the ground beef, hamburgers, chicken thighs, bacon and pork chops that didn't even get cooked. The hamburgers we ate last night, the ground beef is being made into chili (so I can refreeze it) as I write this, the pork chops will get cooked and eaten tonight and the chicken thighs and bacon -- I don't know, I'll figure something out soon.

What I do know is the dial on the freezer now has a very large piece of duct tape on it.

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End of summer fun

It's been a busy few weeks since we got back from the cottage and I've been slacking on the updates and pictures. So, here's what I can tell you.

The week after we got home, Austin went to day camp for one week. It was a junior gymnastics camp for three and four year olds and it was only for 3 hours every morning (the perfect amount of time for him). He loved it and every day when I picked him up he would tell me about everything he did (jumping on the trampoline and doing tricks on the mats were his favourite things) and try to show me the moves he learned.

The key word here is try. It turns out that Austin isn't the most coordinated kid in the world. But he had fun, and that's all that matters. Below is a video I took from parents hour of the kids doing their final 'dance' to show off some of the moves they learned. It's pretty funny.

While Austin was at camp, it was just me and Alex every morning. It was weird at first, but we had a lot of fun. I haven't had alone time with her since last December when Austin stopped going to part-time daycare (and that seems like a lifetime ago). So, for that week, the two of us hung out and played, did the groceries and even went to the wading pool one day. At first, even she wasn't so sure what to make of the mommy-alone time -- in fact when we drove off after dropping Austin off the first day, she spent almost 10 minutes in the car screaming at me and pointing at his car seat. In other words, she was trying to tell me that I forgot Austin!

The last weekend in August, we took the kids down to Buskerfest for an afternoon. They both loved it -- Austin was facinated by all the acts and Alex, well, what she liked most was eating the same piece of corn for an hour.

The Friday of Labour Day weekend, Krista and I took the kids to Centreville. We all had a blast, as even I've never been there before. For starters, even the ferry ride over to Centre Island was exciting as neither kid had ever been on a boat before.

Alex on the train

Austin and mommy on the swan

The last ride of the day -- the carousel

And just like at Wonderland earlier in the summer, Austin loved the rides. But unlike last time, Alex was not too pleased when he got to go on a ride without her (because she was only big enough to go on three rides there). So, while Krista and I took turns taking Austin on rides, the other one would take Alex back to the train -- which she loved! I think we rode the train three or four times in total.

The four of us had so much fun, that even though we didn't leave until 4 p.m., Alex never napped. I had assumed at some point she'd fall asleep in the stroller, (I even brought the big stroller so that she could lie down) but I guess she was having too much fun. She did pass out on the walk back from the ferry to our car though.

Finally, in the long post about what we've been up to, on Labour Day, Ryan and I took the kids to the air show. We didn't actually go to the CNE, we just found a parking spot off Lakeshore and parked ourselves on a blanket on Sunnyside beach. It was great. We saw a couple of propeller planes do tricks and the Blue Angels -- the U.S. Navy jets. They were awesome, and every time, and I mean every time, they zoomed by, Alex did this while screaming with excitment:

That's about all the news for now. The kids are both registered for programming in the fall -- Austin for preschool two mornings a week and Austin and Alex for swimming lessons. So life will continue to be really busy.

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My nephew is here!

I'm an aunt now! (Which makes Ryan's an uncle and the kids older cousins.) Early this morning, my sister Alison called to tell us she gave birth to a baby boy. Theodore William Biggs was born at 12:30 a.m. and weighed 5lbs, 7oz. He was born 16 days early -- which is nothing compared to the fact that he tried to join this world 16 weeks ago!

Mom, dad and baby are all doing well.
Ali, if it's news like this that you have to share -- I'm definitely happy to hear from you in the middle of the night!

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