Good morning! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. As promised, the winner of the drawing, this morning. Linda M, the first comment on the spa items giveaway blog post, your number was selected! Send me an email with your mailing address, so I can get this package off to you quickly. (lili.mounce@gmail.com)
Other topics . . .
You remember my plan to have the entire clan help with Thanksgiving, not just cooking, but all of the additional chores attached to a holiday dinner?
It all worked well. We had 7 people for dinner, and everyone had prepared a different dish to go with dinner (even our two guests).
The 5 of us in my family worked extra chores, both before and after dinner. One daughter was the game-master during dinner, and then washed the serving dishes afterwards. The other daughter filled water glasses before and during dinner, then made tea for everyone after dinner. My son set out the butter, cranberry sauce, olives and pickles before dinner, and then cleared the table after dinner. My husband set the table with plates, silverware and napkins, plus ran the dishwasher before dinner and emptied it out, so we would have room for washing all of the dinner plates. After dinner, he wiped down the counters and stovetop. And I put together the centerpiece, set out placemats and decorated the table for dinner, then put away all of the leftovers after dinner. No one person was burdened with more work than any other. And I completely believe this is how our holiday meals should work for the future.
We kept to a work schedule for preparing our dishes, too. I was very happy with the way use of the the kitchen worked out. Some of us prepared our dishes the day before, and others prepared dishes the day of Thanksgiving. My son and his girlfriend cooked together, which doubled as date-time for the two of them. Other than those two, the rest of us preferred to have the kitchen to ourselves, as we cooked.
Of course, no holiday weekend is complete without at least one disaster. Our water heater sprung a leak overnight, Friday into Saturday. At least we got the full-load of dishes through the dishwasher from Thanksgiving, before this happened.
While I just now called it a disaster, really it isn't. Inconvenient and unpleasant, but not a disaster. Our water heater is in the garage, so no damage to the house was done. And I've been putting aside money, every month, to replace the water heater. So, we are covered, financially.
We've muddled along with boiling water on the stove for washing dishes, and very shallow baths. It's all doable, and the situation will be resolved in the next couple of days.
In the meantime, there is an upside. I'm sure we are using much less water than ever. Without a functioning water heater, there is nothing keeping any of us standing under a prolonged, steady stream of water on a cold morning.
Always a silver lining, isn't there?
