Pizza Night!

"There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do, and that is to figure out at 6:00 a.m. what it wants to eat at 6:00 p.m." -Erma Bombeck

We eat out too much. It is the plight of families with very involved teenagers. Somehow I scheduled every one of my kids' music lessons from 4:00 to 5:00 this year. I thought it was a brilliant idea at the time. What I forgot was that it was going to take a stinking hour to get my kids home from school each day because I now live on the nethermost northern regions of Layton, and they are attending school on the far reaching southern borders of the city. Having to cross three school zones and a train crossing just to retrieve my children from their respective schools is either going to give me a heart-attack, or I may slip slowly into madness and then have a heart-attack. But I digress.

Anyway, when we have orchestra concerts and other such events on a school night, and I'm at piano or viola lessons until 5:00, the whole dinner thing becomes problematic. But I decided this week that I was going to be uber organized and that my family was going to get a home-cooked meal despite our busy schedule. Last night, we would be attending the Nutcracker. Hawaiian haystacks was on the menu. At 12:00, I frantically got chicken and gravy in the crockpot. At 2:30, I furiously began cutting vegetables but had to stop because I had to rush out the door to begin my hour ordeal of picking up the kids. I came crashing through the door at 4:45, after leaving Jonah's piano lesson early, and began grating cheese and chopping chicken all frenzied-like. I threw dinner onto the table at 5:00. We had to leave by 5:10. Everyone had to inhale their food, and there was no time to clean up dinner. I got home from the Nutcracker at 10:00 and got to clean up dried up rice, warm soggy vegetables, and a crockpot of cream gravy that had now shellacked itself to the sides of the pot.

This is madness. The kids have an orchestra concert tonight, and...I'll be picking up a pizza, thank you very much!