Making food, making friends

*I thought I posted this last night, please forgive all the "todays" and "this mornings" that no longer apply.  I don't feel like going through and re-writing it.

Today started out fairly poorly.  The girls slept in until 6:20 new time (usually we get up at 7) so that wasn't too bad, but when I went off to the grocery store to grab a couple last-minute things I needed for some food I was preparing things got hairy.  As I went to check out, I was informed that my credit card was declined.  I tried again, same deal.  To save face I walked over to the ATM to try and get some cash out to pay for my purchase, but my ATM card is the same card I use for my normal purchases and unsurprisingly, it was declined again.  Luckily I had $28 cash in my wallet, so the cashier and I had to go through and un-buy a bunch of things until my total got back down to $28.  I shuffled out of the store in shame, and was quickly on the phone to my bank.

It turns out that someone has stolen our credit card number and made 2 $90-ish purchases at Tim Horton online last night, which luckily set off a red flag and they locked our card.  I was not even aware that Tim Horton HAD an online store, I thought they were just a chain of coffee stores in Canada, but hey, you learn something new every day.  After that, a $400 purchase was attempted from the UK at the website for Manchester United.  Luckily that didn't go through, since our card was already locked.  I am grateful that our bank was quick to lock our cards, but now we won't have our only credit card, which is also our only ATM card, until Tuesday.  On top of that, we ran out of checks 2 weeks ago and requested that they send new ones, but our representative didn't feel like ordering them until a full week after our request, so we can't write checks either.  We are essentially without access to our money for the next day and a half.  This does not help my whole "I don't like to be cut off in an emergency" issue I was dealing with earlier in the week.

Our day got better though, because after a nice afternoon spent happily wrecking cooking in my kitchen, we went to my lovely new friend Lauren and her husband Greg's house for a potluck dinner.

First thing's first, we caged up the kids so the adults could have a nice quiet dinner.

 Just kidding.  The kids were all extremely present throughout the evening, as is evidenced by my current state of deafness from all the screaming and squealing.

 This was the best, most veggie-filled potluck I have ever had the pleasure of attending, not just because I ate myself silly and still have some WW points leftover for the day, but also because it was so much fun to be able to discuss crazy foods and share recipes just by saying which food blog I got them from and have someone else there know what I was talking about!

Juice-sweetened chocolate was enjoyed by one and all

After dinner there was wrestling and foam-rolling

As you can see, I barely got any pictures because I was busy chatting, stuffing my face and chasing down my kids in an effort to keep my wild little things from breaking Lauren and Greg's house.  Luckily, although they definitely bumped up the decibel level, the kids did none of the breaking that happened tonight.  The adults took care of that themselves.  Will is sorry about your glass, Lauren :-)

I'm sure she'll have much better pictures and descriptions on her blog, so if you desire more detail I'll send you over there.  I have blogged all that I am able to this evening, now it is time for me to return to my vegetable coma.  I totally understand now why it is called being in a "vegetative state".