Brad and Mo + 2: A Weekend Full of "Plan B's"

Well this past weekend was a full one. We had lots of plans for some fun things...all of which were somehow changed from the original plan. The Elders Quorum in our ward a had a camp out planned for the men in the ward for Friday night. Brad planned to go, which would leave me with Chelsea and an empty house...PERFECT for a girls night. I really don't know many of the people in our ward, even after being in the ward for a year now, (that's a whole other story) but there is one gal that I've started to get to know. We have quite a bit in common and we have fun together. Her husband is the Elder's Quorum President and so I knew he would be going on the camp out as well so I decided to invite my new friend Anji over for dinner and a chick flick. Just kind of a fun girl's night with our kids while our husbands were out enjoying camping in the wilderness. I was really excited. We decided that we would watch the movie Baby Mama, a movie that the hubbies would never WANT to watch with us, and enjoy some treats. Well the afternoon of the camp out/girl's night i got a call from Brad saying that Ron (Anji's husband) had called to let him know that the camp out had been cancelled. BUMMER! That also meant that our girl's night would be cancelled too. So I called Anji and we decided to go with Plan B and include our husbands in our plans and just get together as families. We were both bummed because we knew our choice in movies wouldn't exactly be thrilling to the guys so we had to change our entertainment selection (I still haven't seen Baby Mama). So Ron,Anji and their little girl came over and we made homemade pizza (including homemade crust). Everyone got to have their own individual pizza and top it with whatever fun things they wanted. Then we let Ron and Anji go through our personal "Blockbuster" (Brad has an extensive DVD collection) and choose a movie. We ended up watching John Q. It was a really fun night with a really fun couple.
Saturday I packed Chelsea up and we headed down to Salt Lake. My former boss, Barbara, from my San Diego days happened to be in town spending some time at the Genealogy library on Temple Square. I love this woman! She is the driest Mormon I've ever met. She is completely obsessed with genealogy, she cans, is big on food storage, has a bishop for a boss, and absolutely LOVES Mormons. She has worked with several over the years (including your truly). Although she wouldn't agree with me, I KNOW this woman will be a member of the church someday and will be called to be a Relief Society President. She laughs when I tell her that. Anyway, she's fantastic and I was thrilled about the opportunity to visit with her. We went to lunch together. She got to hold Chelsea and dote over her. It was really cute. Barb has always loved babies. She took me to PF Changs and treated me to the most yummy yummy food. The best part was the dessert Barb ordered! Whoa! It was a dish called "banana rolls". It's bananas dipped in a batter and fried and rolled in cinnamon and sugar. Then served with vanilla ice cream and they drizzle this amazing carmel sauce over the top and garnish the plate with fresh delicious berries. It was so so good!

Yummy Banana rolls from PF Changs!

It was wonderful to catch up with Barbara and spend the afternoon with her. She is an amazing woman and I'm so glad we have been able to keep in contact with her over the years.

Saturday night was going to be an interesting event. Our ward does these things once a quarter or so called "Meet and Greets". Now one would think their "Meet and Greet" days would be over after graduating from the singles ward portion of your life BUT NO they live on! People in our ward seem to be having a hard time getting to know each other so these "Meet an Greets" have been set up to help us out with that. Basically one family signs up to host one of these get togethers at their home and then other families in the ward sign up to attend them and it gives people a chance to get to know other people in the ward. Well lucky us...Brad signed us up to host one of these shindigs. So we made all kinds of plans, sent out invitations to 7 families, got all kinds of Halloween decorations, bought a pumpkin, bought lots of pumpkin carving tools for a pumpkin carving contest, made tons of food, cleaned my house etc. And sadly, not even to our surprise, ONE couple showed up! ONE! And the couple only came cause they are our neighbors. Well since we already knew them pretty well and they didn't bring a pumpkin to carve we again switched to Plan B. We bagged all of our plans and just sat around and chatted it up for a few hours. It was a good time but now we have a pumpkin sitting on our porch that has yet to be carved :( The "party" was a bust! Oh well!