pop tarts - not as good as we expected

Well, yes, navhelowife, I did want to run away from home. It wasn't all bad, but the fact that it was happening in December, a month which makes me incredibly squirrely at the best of times, was just a bit of a challenge.

Not only was there the overarching pressure of OMG, the children need Christmas presents, we need a tree, shouldn't we chuck some lights at the house, else not only will we be bad parents but bad neighbours, but Amelia's birthday falls on the 12th. (Let me just advise all parents to avoid birthing a child in any month which also has a major holiday in it. You can count to 9 and figure out quite clearly which months are taboo. I clearly wasn't thinking the first time around. Didn't too well the second either as Hugo's is awfully close to the ever wandering Easter.)

Then, this being the winter that Gaia decided to show Vancouver that wearing birkenstocks and buying coffee in your own mug rather than wasting a paper cup is not enough to save the earth, we had storm after storm after storm. Power outages were rampant - which is a bit of a problem once you've yanked out your gas cooktop and the kitchen consists of a coffee-maker, toaster, microwave, and electric kettle. When you have no power and the gas range is in the dumpster, your cooking options decrease dramatically.

Fortunately we have two camping stoves and, along with a CO detector at hand, we managed several meals that way. Including, in fact, Christmas Eve, when we hosted a traditional dinner.
That's me, cooking pierogies in the garage.

The kids were thrilled at the beginning of the reno as we went grocery shopping and bought all the foods we usually don't get. Frozen entrees, boil in a bag, just microwave, ready in 5 minutes! Food that was downright exotic for us. If I could cook it in a microwave or a toaster, I threw it in the cart.

Including PopTarts. We had never had PopTarts before. Our whole experience with the food was limited to an episode of Father Ted in which Ted and Dougal hire a nun to help them keep their lenten vows and she turns out to be from some masochistic sect devoted to mortifying the flesh. Sister Assumpta wakes them at 5 a.m. and gives them plain water for breakfast while Dougal dreamily recounts how he loves a PopTart in the morning. She then proceeds to give them ice baths, beat them with sticks and give them a jolly Catholic time. The entire episode is hilarious but somehow what stuck with Hugo was the line about Father Dougal loving his PopTarts in the morning.

Hugo chanted this through the entire shopping trip until we made it the correct aisle. He selected a large variety box.

Turned out we all hated them and it took over a month for them to finally be reluctantly consumed.