chicken ala Lowder, basterds and cartoons

We had a very eventful weekend at the Lowder house. Friday night, Mike's band had a gig at "Q", this new, trendy, fabu club on Main Street in St. Charles. So I deemed it "Girls Nite" for Claire and me. The plan was to go to Schroeder Park to see the movie "Finding Nemo" outside with a picnic dinner. The plan didn't include a ginormous stormcloud planting itself right over the park shortly after we arrived. We ate our picnic dinner in the car together and hoped that the rain would pass quickly, but alas - it did not. The crying started pretty quickly (from Claire obviously) so I eased the pain with a kids sprinkle cone from DQ. Does the trick every time. I also thought our own movie 'slumber party' might make her happy. We had "The Little Mermaid" at home from Netflix, so we popped that on upstairs after we got in our jammies and watched it in bed. It was fun. I remember loving that movie when I was a pre-teen. You know - before I understood the blatant misogyny and stuff. (I mean she has to choose between her legs or her voice to be on land to cozy up to Prince Eric? He doesn't even have any chest hair for god's sake...) But I digress.

Saturday I had to work. As usual. I have a new MSW Intern starting, so I trained her on our Saturday Social Programs. Today was supposed to be Yoga, but no one came. Free Yoga people?! Come on! I guess the awesome weather was keeping everyone away. It was beautiful outside. I want to live somewhere where it's like this every day.

We hired a babysitter for Saturday night. That allowed us to go to church with Jenny and Matt and then dinner at The Kind and I for Thai food. Good spring rolls, not so good Cashew Chicken. Then we took an exorbinant amount of time with at least two people checking their iPhone at a time to schedule a movie. We figured the guys would want to see one thing (District 9, G.I. Joe) and the ladies would want to see a 'chick flick' (Julie and Julia, The Time-Traveler's Wife). But after 40 minutes or so ( I wish I were kidding ) we all agreed to see "Inglorious Basterds" with Brad Pitt. It's a Quentin Tarantino film and I warned everyone that I was likely to 1. cry, 2. freakout, 3. vomit or 4. leave, if they violence got to be too much. I've been known to do at least 3 out of those 4 during showings of previous Tarantino movies. Mike and Matt were like "but they're killing Nazi's! It's for a good cause! It's just a movie!". Lovely. What made matters slightly worse is that the theater was so packed we had to sit in the second row. Literally. Even lovlier! I have to say though - the writing and story was really good! Brad Pitt's character had The Best lines. I had to cover my eyes several time (and my ears) but it was worth it. Awesome movie! Long live Aldo and Shosanna!

Sunday morning Claire and I woke up early and talked Mike into going to the Festival of the Little Hills in St. Charles. We stayed for like 4 hours in the beautiful sunshine. Claire got a butterfly lollipop, I got a handmade wrought iron towel holder thingey with Fleur de Lis and Mike got a berry crisp for $1 at Tiffany's work. Oh yeah - we got to eat lunch in the shade at Garden ala Fleur Cafe, where my sister-in-law Tiffany works. Best red pepper bisque ever. I wanted to get a pretty necklace with polished stone and my monogram, but the wait time was really long and we were really tired.

Mike's mowing the lawn, Claire's playing with neighbors, and I'm watching Melissa D'Arabian cook chicken ala'orange. Could I make that? I have everything needed but the chicken. And the oranges. Maybe it'll be tilapia ala lemon. But what I really wanna eat is fried chicken. Time to bribe Claire to ask if we can go to Cracker Barrell. It's always more cute when she asks anyway :)