Sunday, February 14, 2010

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Living where we do, we often have visitors at church. Since the Branch members only total around 15 each week, the visitors are easy to spot and made to feel very welcome with all the members introducing themselves and shaking their hands. Usually, I am too tied up with the four boys so I don't get to talk to many of the visitors. I figure that keeping the kids in line an some sort of reverence in the room we use as our chapel is more important.

Today, however, was a bit different. Tom decided he was too sick to go to church today. I wasn't convinced he was actually really sick but Dylan did have an awful runny nose this morning and he was exhausted from our Flagstaff trip yesterday, so I didn't fight Tom on the extent of his sickness. I let him make the choice if he was too sick to attend church or not and let him know he would be staying in his room reading the Friend or his scriptures and NOT just chilling eating all the treats in the house and watching cartoons. He decided he was in fact too sick so I left him home and put Dylan down for a nap.

I learned one thing very quickly. After having four kids at church, two is a cake walk! (For all you with just two kids, I know it isn't really a cake walk. I was blessed with Logan and Ethan today.)

So, back to the visitors. Since I just had the two, I felt I could shake hands and introduce myself. I went over just in time to hear my lovely husband invite the young couple to dinner. Yep, dinner. Yep, on Valentine's Day. It was actually a great day to invite someone. I had planned one of Gary's favorite meals and knew we would have tons. The menu would include shrimp, tomato and mushroom Alfredo with crunchy onion loaf, a Caesar salad and asparagus. It was going to be great. Right up to the point that we learn Kenny is lactose intolerant and vegetarian followed closely by finding no croutons for the salad (a pivotal ingredient) and no burner to saute the asparagus.

No problem. I'll just open up a jar of pasta sauce and have that as well. It was actually a huge hit with the boys and that way Ethan and Dylan wouldn't have to eat the cream and butter laden Alfredo sauce.

So, at six o'clock on the dot, Kenny and Danielle came to dinner. They were great dinner guests. The conversation flowed easily. They were gracious. They appeared to like both the boys and the dog. They were a great pair to invite over.

I never in a million years would have thought that one of the benefits of living in the Grand Canyon and attending a teeny, tiny little branch, would be meeting people from all over the world and getting to have dinner with the few that dare take complete strangers up on the offer. I'm very grateful today that Kenny and Danielle did take Gary up on the offer and I hope we will stay in contact. I wonder who's coming to dinner next week? I'll put on extra potatoes just in case.

1 comment:

Irene said...

I did'nt know you had guests for dinner. You're just like your grandma Larson though. Great at impromptu & love to cook! Glad you inherited that great quality from her. Your a great mom & wife. :)