I hope those of you who celebrate it had a nice Easter and for those that don’t, congrats on the free long weekend!!

Before the teacup humans came along I liked nothing more than entertaining friends, cooking a lovely three-course meal and enjoying some good wine.  Then the whirlwinds turned up and that became a thing of the past.

As the boys start to get more independent, however, I’ve started to make to a concerted effort to socialise with more adults (if only to exercise my grownup conversational skills again!)

So, this weekend we invited some dear (child-free) friends over for Easter dinner.  Them being child-free means ours are still a novelty. The constant barrage of inane chatter is endearing rather than irritating and their naked, post-bath rampage through the apartment is greeted with heart-felt laughter instead of the surpassed urge to yell.

Now to the dinner.  I did all my shopping, preparation and planning in advance (or so I thought!) so I could greet my guests with a zen-like calm, offer a glass of wine and casually  keep an eye on dinner whilst enthralling them with intelligent chit-chat about current affairs. Reality, on the other hand was just a little bit different:

• The boys napped late and Mr. British Maple and I got caught up watching the latest series of Broadchurch on Netflix, so I forgot to peel the potatoes.
• Upon waking up, the boys immediately velcroed themselves to my legs, rendering me less than useless.
• Mr. BM kindly removed them from the situation and terrorised the park for an hour whilst I regained control of dinner…phew!
• I prep the potatoes, consult the fancy bacon-roasted sprouts recipe and open the wine to let it breathe.
• Ball bags.  I don’t have any canola oil to roast the tats in.  Coconut oil it is then…I’ll just mask the Caribbean  overtones with garlic and herbs…that’ll work?!
• Our guests arrive and I duly offer the wine.  Pants!  I totally forgot I smashed all but one of my wine glasses.  One plastic glass and a champagne flute – problem solved.
  

  Quality vessels for a rather nice wine!

• The boys arrive home, hungry and excited so I dish out the dinner.  Crap!  I’ve burnt the caramelised carrots.  Double crap, I forgot to serve the smoked salmon starter.
• Right…let’s dig in.  Lamb – nice (slightly cold).  Brussel sprouts – okay (slightly soggy due to my random addition of stock that wasn’t in the recipe). Carrots – burnt (and undercooked at the same time – impressive!). Potatoes – coconutty but well-cooked (damn you garlic – you had one job!). Gravy – actually quite nice…the saviour of the meal.
• Now to dessert.  I had ambitiously attempted an angel food cake roulade.  It looked good but apparently slicing through a delicate roll with a bread knife isn’t a good idea.  Having said that, the pile of cake, cream and chocolate sauce tasted acceptable.

The meal finished, the coco-potato-nut sniggering died down and it’s time for the presentation of Easter eggs.  Liz and Phil are the favourite guests of our tinkers, not only for their tantalising conversation but their generous supply of chocolate too! Cue a frenzy of chocolate-induced silliness, right before bedtime – marvellous!

All three boys share a love of orange shades! (Photo credit to Liz!)

By this time, my job is done and Mr. BM takes over the tidying and bath time duties while I enjoy a lovely glass of red wine and gossip.  Before we know it, there are two naked toddlers streaking through the apartment and we jump into action to contain, dry and dress the berserk miniatures and throw them into bed (by throw them in to bed I obviously mean read too many books, visit the potty twice, drink too much water and creep out of the room after 45 minutes of pretending to sleep on the floor!).

To be honest, having a dinner party with kids isn’t really that different from before after all.  I still got it…errr.

Big thanks to Jean and family for the awesome Easter brunch and egg hunt that preceded the less-than successful Easter dinner!  Check out her fabulous blog here – The Self-Styled Life