if we come for dinner be prepared

On sunday night a family from the school invited our family for dinner. The thing about visiting other peoples houses, especially when they have fewer kids than us, is that their houses are always so damn nice. I always find myself looking around at the zen appeal. Everything in it's place - a place for everything. No stuff. No, actually, lots of nice stuff - no crap. Our decorating theme consists of toys, billions of varieties of footwear and various flotsam and jetsom that falls off the dogs as they wander to and fro. Chaos rules every aspect of my life.

I have recently given up on the homemaking part of my job description. It's too freakin hard. Oh, i clean and tidy and cook and play playdoh and do mountains of laundry every week. I've just given up on having a tidy house for more than a few moments. Those moments usually happen when family is visiting. They never happen when i leave the house for a few hours and hope to return to homemaking nirvana. Nope. It's always much worse at those times.

Anyway, we went to the perfectly pretty and cute house for dinner. I'm fairly certain that my children broke every rule in that house. They climbed on the furniture, ran in the house, screamed and - hold your breath - took out more than one toy at a time. I figure we are very good birth control for the houses we visit.

At one point our hostess was telling me about one time when her kids went somewhere else and were allowed to climb on the furniture and how it was very hard for her to get them to NOT do that at home. I think somewhere in the middle of that conversation it occurred to her that it most probably was my house that allowed the heathen climbing on furniture behaviour. In fact, i think at that moment my kids were re-arranging her furniture into a fort.

Right off the bat they offered shane and i sour apple martinis! Awesome! Shane and i really had to tame ourselves because those things are like kool-aid and we could definately drink a lot of those. I didn't want to get all dudley moore again so i restrained myself. Plus, we don't want to be *that* family. The one you have to buy lots of booze for.

The dinner was lovely. The kids were well behaved, except the fort thing. But, hey, they didn't break anything and they ate all their dinner. We left happy, feeling like bumpkins and with leftovers for lunch today! Perfect.