Three nights, three meals, three movies.

That about sums up my weekend.

Mom and dad went to South Carolina so she could sing at a homecoming service, and we played host to Aunt Debra.



On Friday, I made chili (please don't be impressed - it's mainly dumping Chili Magic, Boca crumbles, and diced tomatoes into a pot and letting it get hot) at mom's house and we watched Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Seriously, I don't know what the production budget must've been for that movie, but I can only imagine it was huge. I mean, Jim Carrey gets like $20 million per picture on his own. Plus there was Meryl Streep, Cedric the Entertainer, Billy Connolley (loved him in Mrs. Brown) and (for cryin' out loud!) Dustin Hoffman. And I'm sure there were others that I was too unhip or too distracted by Anna Marie to notice. All in all, not a bad movie.

Then came Saturday. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I found myself once again cooking dinner at mom's. Only this time, there was no game plan, so I had to resort to a "pantry raid." I found a box of thin spaghetti. Amanda had half a jar of tomato and basil pasta sauce, and I added a can of diced tomatoes to make sure we had enough. It was surprisingly good.



For the movie, we watched Waking Ned Devine. Aunt Debra had seen it, but a long time ago, so she didn't remember much. If you haven't watched this movie, you seriously need to. It will have you wanting to move to Ireland to a little village with only 52 people.

On Sunday night, Amanda did the cooking. Vegetable soup, to replace that which she had made on Saturday (she doesn't eat spaghetti) but that got destroyed when I opened the refrigerator door and had a container of scalding hot soup come down on my foot. Ouch! That whole incident was NOT MY FAULT, by the way. I was just collateral damage.



Our movie selection was the first Pirates of the Carribbean. (Obviously, because the only way we'd have been able to watch the second one was a bootlegged copy, and we're not going there.) Aunt Debra had not seen it at all, and she was pretty creeped out by the skeleton pirates. I assured her we had not let Anna Marie watch that one! But, despite the creepiness, Aunt Debra declared the movie a good one.

My weekend is now a blur of movies and meals. Next weekend starts soccer season, so I'll have far less time to relax for a while.