The first time I tried to recreate my mom's pancake breakfast for the Wells boys was kind of a flop.
We tried it again on Memorial Day.
Here's the end of the story first: it rocked. Rocked.
Here's the beginning and middle of the story:
The first hurdle was the calendar. There was a chance that the boys wouldn't be at our house for breakfast that holiday Monday and that this breakfast plan would have been postponed through another baseball season, but we arranged to pick up the boys on Sunday.
The second hurdle is the timing. We all agreed on 10:00ish so J and I could work out before breakfast and so Ethen could sleep in. Alex always gets up early, so we gave him a snack and the promise of his favorite sausage.
The third hurdle was the food! My mom serves up everything as it's hot off the irons, but that didn't work for us last time. This time, I baked the bacon in the oven, sizzled the sausage on the griddle, and waffled between two waffle irons. When a batch of waffles were done, they went on a cookie sheet in the warm oven.
We put all the food on the table, prayed, and passed plates. We chatted, passed more plates, and cleaned the kitchen together.
Halfway through eating, I was smiling to myself. J caught my eye, and gave me the I-know-you're-emotional-right-now-because-you're-so-proud smile. I gave him the do-not-give-me-that-smile-right-now-so-you-can-push-my-tears-over-the-edge "Stop." Then:
E: What's he doing?
me: He's smiling because he knows how much I'm enjoying this.
E: Yeah, this is really good.
me: Well, thank you, this IS good, but we weren't smiling about the food. We're smiling because I've been wanting to do this for a while, have a big breakfast with us all at the table, where we're all smiling and laughing and telling stories without me running back and forth from the kitchen like last time.
E: Oh. [smiles] Yeah, this is nice.
As Ethen was clearing his plate, a friend called him asking to hang out. E replied, "Well, I can't go right this minute - my dad is still enjoying his breakfast." : )
So that's how Wells do Pancake Breakfasts. : )
