Pancake Night...

Yes, I know that is a strange title for a blog post. I wanted to share an experience that we had just last night. We have become good friends with a family from Texas. They have a five year old girl, a three year old girl and a little boy who just turned two. We first met this family at the airport in Richmond way back in May when we came to our candidate conference. We were to be carpool buddies during our conference and we have been friends since. They are awesome and we really love them and love having them as friends. Ok, back to “Pancake Night”. Pancake night evolved from a family ritual that started with our friends from Texas. It began as “waffle night”, but we did not have a waffle maker here, so we opted for pancakes, hence pancake night. The idea is that it will be easier to cook and eat in our quad area rather than taking all of the kids to the cafeteria. Well, as we started we realized that we did not really have anything to cook pancakes on or with, so Paige and I went to the store and bought us a skillet and spatula. Now we are ready to cook. We start out with 2 pounds of bacon. We forget that the kitchen is only about as big as a decent size hall closet, not to mention the fire alarm is in the kitchen, so we are cooking with the door and the windows open so as to not alert the local friendly fire department. While in the process of cooking the two year old insists that it is much better to be in the kitchen than out in the open area playing with the other kids. The only problem with that is the tiny little stove we are cooking on is not much bigger than one of those easy bake ovens and he can reach up and touch the pan that is on the stove. Meanwhile the little boy’s dad has to keep getting up and taking him out to the common area just outside of the kitchen and that just makes the boy more anxious to get in the kitchen. I think I actually saw his hair turning gray. Finally, we are finished cooking and we all are able to sit down and enjoy our dinner. The dinner went without incident, but in the time it took to cook, keep all of our kids occupied, and finally eat we wondered if maybe we should have just taken the kids to the cafeteria. To fully appreciate the story you need to go to http://www.kingfamilyfiveblog.blogspot.com/ and read about the cafeteria experience. It is priceless!!