Tony and Nenoy are visiting us this week. As I mentioned before, they are related to me, somehow. (Obviously on my mother’s side.)

I’ve spent a lot of time at their house in Florida, but this was the first time they came to mine. I wasn’t sure what to expect when they visited. All I knew is that they planned their trip around the Taste of Chicago.

Which really tells you quite a lot of about these people. They are serious foodies. Whenever I see them I’m always surprised they do not weigh 1000 pounds each. Because these people can eat.

They arrived with a list of things they needed to check out. Al’s Beef, Deep Dish, a genuine Chicago hot dog, and of course, all the tid bits at the Taste of Chicago. They even managed to fit some culture and city tours in, between bouts of eating. And when they returned at night, tired from all the walking, they turned on “Master Chef” and watched people cooking food. We also spent a lot of time talking about food. I got many great tips this week. I promise to share them in later blogs.

A couple of mornings I woke up to see this on my kitchen counter…

I told Jack we were having custard buns and Chai Sui Bao from Chinatown for breakfast. He shouted, “I love those!”

Even though it was naughty white carbs and forbidden pork, I had to smile. It warmed my heart that Jack is already integrated into the Chinese culture. Over the generations we may have lost the language and the slanty eyes, but here was proof that a little piece of my heritage will be preserved for at least one more generation.

It turned out that having Tony and Nenoy around for the week was a real bonus for me. They were super helpful with all the kids. Nenoy cleaned my kitchen better than I knew how to and Aaron became attached to Tony, following him around everywhere and crying unless Tony was holding him.

Not only did they watch the kids, clean and come home every night bearing food but on Thursday, they also cooked us an amazing meal.

Nenoy made dumplings and Tony made a Jamaican Brown Stew Chicken. Both were so delicious I ended up stuffing myself before my girls night out that evening.

Nenoy and Ben making dumplings

Tony’s cooking his Brown Stew Chicken.

It has been so nice having them here. They basically showed up and acted exactly like family should. Or how you hope, in a perfect world, they would.

I’m going to be sad to see them leave. Perhaps I can convince them to come back next summer, surely they haven’t finished tasting all the culinary delights Chicago has to offer?

Ben turned four today. He has been waiting for this day since Jack turned 6.

“Where are my presents?” he has been asking us every day. Here they are Ben, in the wrapping paper you picked out for yourself…

For breakfast we had pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes…

And because Jack was so upset by all the attention Ben was getting, I made sure to make something special for him too…

As you can see Jack had soccer camp this morning. I asked Anjelica to come early so I could take Ben to do something very special for his birthday. A cupcake decorating class at Sweet Mandy B’s. Not just any cupcake class, a superhero cupcake class!

 Afterwards Ben got to pick where we went for lunch. He picked (surprise, surprise) MacDonalds. They had minions from Despicable Me 2 as the happy meal toy. Since Adam took Jack and Adam to see that movie yesterday, he was very excited. We brought Jack’s buddy Timmy with us to lunch. I bought them all 2 minions each. It was the best thing I ever did. They were chasing each other in the play room afterwards and couldn’t touch each other because they were all double fisted – a minion in each hand.

We headed back home for the afternoon. We have visitors arrive today from Florida. Tony and Nenoy, who are somehow related to me but no one can seem to explain how.

They were great with the kids. Ben decided to change his name this afternoon to “Mr. Naked” for our guests, but they didn’t seem to mind…

For dinner Ben ordered pizza. We got Giordanos famous stuffed pizza for our guests, a white carb cheese explosion that any visitor from out of town must experience to believe.

Finally, we lit the chocolate on chocolate cake picked out by Ben, sorry I mean Mr. Naked,  or … well … uhm … whoever he is … he picked out the writing on top …

Adam at Santa’s Village with his cousins.

Recently Adam heard somewhere that Santa’s Village had reopened. He remembered the place fondly from when he was a kid.

He decided to plan a trip with the older boys.

Adam has been hyping this trip up so much to the kids that he was worried they would be disappointed. At night before bed he would play them the video from their website.

But how could anyone be disappointed with this line up? Jack and Adam actually sent me this list in an email so I could relive again with them exactly how they went about their day.

1 Truck ride
2 Carousel
3 Race cars
4 Boat rides
5 Birds
6 Balloon ride
7 Rocket ship
8 Fire engine 2x

This ride actually had real hoses on them. They drive you to a fire and the kids squirt the hoses to put the fire out.

9 Antique cars 3x
10 Magic carpet ride
11 lunch
12 Ferris wheel
13 space ride
14 spin thing
15 ice cream and candy
16 slide
17 reindeer ride
18 pony race

19 exit through the gift shop and buy new toys. (purple unicorn stuffed animal for Ben and four monster trucks for Jack.)

And of course after a day like that, the only thing to do in the long car ride home is…

Yes, that is a face full of chocolate.

Fourth of July found us sunny and warm for the first time in days. It was a welcome change, considering it is JULY and SUMMER and therefore we should be enjoying the only three month of glorious weather allotted to us Midwesterners. Not that snow and cold doesn’t have it’s moments, but you know what they say… you can take the girl out of Florida but you can’t take Florida out of the girl.

Adam agreed to have some friends over so I picked friends that matched our family well. Husband that Adam likes. Wife that I like. And a kid who is Jack’s age that he likes. It’s actually a lot harder than you think to find, a family where all the members invited are matched well with someone in our family.

Adam spent at ton of time cleaning up our deck so we could then go and mess it up.

We did our best to make it July Fourthy.

On the fourth, you gotta grill….

And make some sort of food that has red, white and blue in it…

I had the kids assemble desserts for the adults. Strawberries, blueberries, angel food cake, whipped cream. They then decided we needed more toppings so I broke out the chocolate chips and sprinkles too.

Then, we got a surprise dessert from the neighbor. I thought the free food would stop coming when Charlie closed his restaurant, but I was happily mistaken.

Rochelle Trotter assembled this masterpiece on her Fox new show this morning and we unabashedly accepted it.

Roya and Jack got along smashingly…

The twins had their first kiddie pool experience….

And the older boys found out what can happen when your father tells you to stop fighting and you ignore him…

This summer has been testing my limits as a mother of 4 small kids.

It’s much better than last summer, where I couldn’t be by myself with all four of them for longer than an hour. But it’s still very limiting. And I’m not sure if I was just more scared back then to be by myself and less willing to let kids cry. Perhaps I’m just getting used to the absolute chaos. Or maybe it is actually easier.

Still, I can not go to most parks by myself. That rules out a lot.

I can run errands.

Target

My method is to put the twins in the stroller and push them while dragging the shopping cart behind me. Sometimes Jack and Ben are sitting in the back cart. On the way in and out I am very strict. Both older boys must hold onto the stroller the entire walk from the car to the store. I still find it extremely stressful, though. I had Jack and Ben run away from me in the supermarket the other day, they were inthralled in their ongoing drama, the one where Jack antagonized Ben and Ben tries to attack him in anger.  Sometimes Ben randomly attacks Jack and then Jack antagonizes Ben because of it. It’s a ‘which came first the chicken or the egg’ type scenario.

They ran away from me and after calling them to come back repeatedly, I finally got them back by yelling across the entire store that they just lost their dessert that evening. The check out woman looked at me with sympathy and said, “Rough day?”

I answered, “No, it’s always like this.”

The sympathy drained from her eyes and she hardened, looking at me with new eyes. They were the eyes of someone who might call child services regarding this incident.

It’s moments like this when I realize how out of control everything is, and how my life is totally unlike most people’s lives that I come in contact with.

Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to find a new thing I could do with all four kids. Something all parties found enjoyable.

Play dates at my own house!

I had a few of Ben’s school friends over for a play date. I enjoyed adult conversation while my kids occupied themselves with friends instead of the chicken/egg drama that seems to play out when we are stuck in the house by ourselves.

Undoubtedly this summer I will find more ways to manage these four kids alone, without everyone driving each other nuts. I hope. Wish me luck.