Five Dollar Pizza From Heaven

Every now and again the universe sends you exactly what you need in the seconds before you think all is lost. In my case it was a piping hot $5.00 pizza from Price Chopper. Now you are most likely thinking to yourself right about now that I need to step up my expectations in life if this is my version of Heaven. Just read.

Won’t bore you with the minutia of my endless Friday but here’s the condensed overview: Awake at 5:00am after a couple of hours of sleep, get kids up, ready, out, work, errands, run Girl Scout meeting, pick up rest of the pack from babysitter, home, more errands, and then St. Patrick’s day grocery shopping. That brings us to the moments before my manna from Heaven (if manna comes with tomato sauce and a heavy handed layer of mozzarella).

Picture three tired children along with their cranky mom (insert my face) on their way to the second grocery store because first one did not have all of the necessary Irish accoutrements for our upcoming celebrations. It’s after 8pm; no one has eaten, and trust me when I say that doesn’t make anyone in this family any nicer. The wall of glass slides open and in we walk to be greeted by a woman in a flowing robe and a halo. Okay – the children are saying that she was in a Price Chopper polo shirt and the light over her head was the glare off the donut case but hey, we all see what we want, right?

Anyway…..in we walk to find this angel (a.k.a. underpaid Price Chopper employee) approaching us with a box held regally before her. Angels sang as she asked us, “Would you like a fresh, hot, five dollar pizza tonight?”

And there it was – the one thing I didn’t have to think about taking care of on our never-ending Friday. Dinner. Gifted to us from a woman who had to be Heaven sent. Wasn’t the best pizza we’ve ever had, nor was it the worst, but last night it was the most appreciated pizza I’ve ever eaten.

i is for interrupt

I’m interrupting my regular A to Z Challenge post with some exciting news.  Well – it’s exciting for me and anyone eating at our place.  For the rest of you it’s really just an interesting FYI and possibly a reason to turn down a dinner invitation.   I won a contest on another blog I follow!  YEAH!!!!!

The Family Dinner Project is a great blog with a mission to bring people together over the dining table.  It’s not a revolutionary concept – just one that needs some revisiting in today’s hectic world.

Below is a copy of today’s post from their site:

Embarrassing Dinner Habit Contest: We Have a Winner!

Posted on: April 10th, 2012 by Allissa

In response to our “Most Embarrassing Dinner Habit” contest, we received some wonderfully funny and honest submissions. They ranged from watching movies while eating, to serving-up fast food, to finding wads of meat beneath your children’s plates.

Thank you so much for sharing your stories! We thoroughly enjoyed reading them, and could definitely sympathize with many of these habits. In fact, we’ve even examined similar habits in our recent blog posts. For example, in her post about picky eaters, Dr. Anne Fishel gives advice on how to encourage kids to try new foods. And this Family Blog post by a reader named Kim contains several interesting meal-planning ideas.

But now for the contest winner! (Drum roll, please!) After careful deliberation, we decided that an entry about “gross-out” dinner conversation took the contest cake. As Laura describes, during dinner, each member of her family shares the grossest story from their day.

Embarrassing? Sure. But it’s a great example of how using unique conversation starters can get kids talking. Congratulations to Laura, who will be receiving a $100 supermarket gift card!

We’ll be announcing our next contest next week, so definitely be on the look out. In the meantime, please enjoy Laura’s winning entry:

“I would like to preface this entry by noting that our embarrassing dinner habit started out with really good intentions.  To encourage family communication a few years back, we started having our children tell us something interesting about their day at dinner time. 

We used a round table format and each of us (hubby and I included) would mention something that happened or something we saw/read/etc.  Somehow, this has morphed into telling the grossest story you can.  Topics range from school friends who can get milk through their nose on command (okay—truth moment—so can my oldest daughter) to someone’s gory injury to anything my husband has seen at work (he works in the wastewater industry – enough said). 

The kids love it, and occasionally someone from the “under 12” friend pool is allowed to participate…but we don’t really talk about family dinner with any friends we want to keep.”

http://thefamilydinnerproject.org/project-team/#