Billets are on their way

We're such introverted types here that we're dreading it a little bit. But I said to Chris this morning that if one of our kids ever went on a school band tour, I'd want them to stay with people like us. So we should be those kind of people now.

The house is clean (almost). Just the kitchen and dining room table to do. Rosie's toy kitchen, for the third time today. I put all the little plates, knives, forks, spoons and wooden bits of fruit away neatly, and she walked in behind me as I was leaving and said, "I cook now." So it is back to the state it was in to start with.

There was only one book hidden behind the toilet (don't ask). Will have to have a word to the older two about that...again.

Sultana cake with brandy soaked sultanas in it is made and cooling down. It smells amazing. Dinner tonight is fancied up spaghetti bolognese with garlic bread and salad. And chocolate mousse with strawberries on top for dessert.

Praying that we can show hospitality to these guys and that they will like us/we will like them. And that the younger kids can cope with the additional family members for the next couple of days.

Here's a great blog

If you are often cooking meals for other people at church (or anywhere else, for that matter). It's called Food That Serves and it has all kinds of helpful hints and meal ideas for cooking for other people.

There's a great post about pie-makers on it. I don't own a pie maker myself (we just cut up and squish the pastry into our ancient pie dishes) but I'm seriously tempted to get one after reading that post. For winter meals, we often make pies to give away. Over the weekend, we made a double quantity of savoury mince and made a shepherd's pie for ourselves and a pastry pie for a family at church. It sounds like the pie-maker might make the step of making the pastry fit into the dish properly a little less painful. The supermarket pastry squares always seem to be just that little bit too small.

Reactive cleaning in progress....

It's really hot here today. Like summer. So we invited some people from church around this afternoon for a swim in our pool.

Having people over is usually the best way to get us to clean our house. For the rest of the time, other than picking toys up off the floor, not much gets done. It wasn't looking too good an hour ago. But sweeping and mopping are now done. Just the quick bathroom and toilet run around to go. Chris has just come back from Coles with food and drink (chips, cheese, biscuits, fruit).

We're getting better at the "not going to too much trouble" approach when we have people over. It seems to work better for us than talking about planning to invite people around (usually this discussion goes on between Chris and I for several weeks) and then not getting around to doing anything. Spontaneous seems to be the way to go.