Saturday: FAIL

My dad asked me if I would leave my kids with him, just him, for a week. I said no because we were there for 40 minutes and this is what happened. Granted, it was my brother Andrew who actually gave her that sucker, but I bet my dad was thinking about doing it, or something like it.

Tyler had/took 6 days off for Christmas break, came back and worked 2 days, and then had another 4-day weekend. It's been great up until yesterday.

Tyler's sister gave us a box of Omaha Steaks for Christmas, which meant that we had to buy a new BBQ, I guess. We used to have Tyler's parent's old Weber BBQ, which was probably like 25 years old. We left it out in one too many monsoons and the bottom rusted out. Dang. On our new house, there's a natural gas port in the backyard, so we've (read: Tyler) has wanted to buy a new one since we moved, and I guess this box of steaks was as good a reason as any.

We first went to the Tucson Children's Museum which is always a good time. Lillian likes the jungle room and the veterinarian room. It all started to go south when we left. The tears. Oh, the tears. Disaster 1. And they didn't really let up once we got to Lowe's. Both children were generally irritated while looking at the BBQs. This was our second BBQ buying trip, our first was to Home Depot, but their selection (of BBQs in our price range) was crappy. We found one we liked and Tyler had it on a cart when he asked a sales rep if there was a conversion kit to make it work with natural gas. The sales rep said that the model didn't work with natural gas, and in fact, they didn't carry many models that did, so we just left. Disaster 2.

In the car, both children were starting to fall apart. I was getting really hungry so we (read: I) decided we would drive through McDonald's and get a Hot 'N Spicy Chicken Sandwich and small fry for the kids to tie me over until dinner. This took forever. I don't know if they were harvesting the potatoes or plucking the chickens or what but we waited in line at the drive-thru for at least 10 minutes. I was regretting my decision because I was really really hungry and if we had just gone home, I could have been eating 5 minutes ago. Disaster 3.

I had taken out two of the steaks out of the freezer to cook for dinner on our new BBQ and was kind of looking forward to them, so I looked in the handy recipe book that came with our package how to cook them on the stove/in the oven. You sear them in a pan and then put that pan into the oven and bake them for 5 minutes until they're done. When I took the pan out of the oven, I put it up on the glass cooktop. After I took the steaks and put them on plates, I realized that I had set the pan on the burner that I had just used to make mac and cheese, and it was probably still hot. Without thinking, I grabbed the pan handle to scoot it over. My hand only made contact with it for approximately 0.2 seconds, but that was enough to give me 2nd degree burns on my palm. Disaster 4.

As soon as dinner was over, Lillian said she had to go to the bathroom. Tyler took her as I was languishing on the couch with my hand in some frozen peas. I could hear the argument about whether or not Lillian should go poo. It went on for some time. "I want mom! I want mom!" I got up and for half and hour, I sat on the floor of the bathroom with my hand under running water and coaxed, cheered on, yelled at, and was exasperated with Lillian. Finally, I had to pull out the big guns: the liquid glycerine suppository, which worked in about 30 seconds. Disaster 5.

As we were putting the kids to bed, Tyler said, "man, I'm worn out."