April Fools!

Tonight we had a special April Fool's dinner. I was too excited about this all day, I actually set up a curtain partition in the kitchen so the kids couldn't see what was being prepared for dinner to keep it a surprise. Grandma and Grandpa Livingstone graciously came over and were good sports, Grandma Livingstone did this a lot when her kids were little too :) Also Aunt Jessica came over after she sent off her hubby who chose to flee the state rather than be subjected to yet another strange meal at our house. . . We did the menu thing with a few little tricks thrown, in - there were 6 things they could order on the menu so we had three courses and they ordered two items per course, here's what they chose from and what they really were:

Nectar of Life (a cup of water)
Cow's Blood (a glass with jello - it looked like a cup of juice until they tried to drink it! Ha-ha!)
Fish Blob Nuggets and Squashed Spuds with Peace and Wabbit's Delight (this one looked like chicken nuggets and mashed potatoes with gravy and peas and carrots BUT it was in fact oatmeal cookies, ice cream with carmel sauce and green and orange jellybeans - it wasn't super convincing looking but it got some laughs.)
Mini Sweet Cup (this one looked like a cupcake with pink frosting but it was actually meatloaf baked in a cupcake cup and topped with pink colored mashed potatoes, it was awesome and totally tricked the diners.)
Poseidon's Trident (a fork)
Mini Bowl (a spoon)

So there were some fun ordering mishaps, Jeffy got the ice cream dish and the jello for the first course but no utensils to eat with and he was the first to discover the jello trick (tee-hee). Alana got the "Mini Sweet Cup" for her first course and was licking the mashed potatoes off the top and all the other diners asked her how the frosting was (they still didn't know it wasn't a cupcake) and Alana said, "It's not frosting, it's mashed potatoes." And they didn't believe her, they thought she was joking. Ha-ha! It still makes me laugh. I had Ryan helping me put the dishes together behind the curtain and it took him a long time to figure out that they weren't really cupcakes, he was kind of like, "So, what's for dinner?" Hee-hee! I giggled a lot while listening to them discovering my trickery.


The "cupcakes" were actually really tasty even with the strange colored potatoes, it was a fun way to make meatloaf, I stuffed red peppers and corn and onion in them because I couldn't figure out another way to get veggies into the dish as a side and make them look desserty. . . I'll work on it for next year. Note in the picture above how Alana put her "peas and carrots" on top of her jello. I'm not sure how much the kids actually ate, but whatever - we had fun so I guess it doesn't matter.

It was a good day and it turned out well, maybe I'll grow up to be one of those fun, cool moms. . .