Father's Day BBQ

As many of you may know, I am horrible at surprises. Well, maybe that's not actually the case, because I love to plan surprises and I love to surprise people, what I'm horrible at is waiting a long time after I have put a surprise together before I carry it out. This Father's Day makes a perfect example. So since the summer started, Aaron has been kind of in to BBQing. We've gone over to the park several times and used the grills over there, and we've had a good time. The only problem is that the park is usually crowded, the picnic tables are disgusting to say the least, and we have to haul all of our food, eating accessories, and children a semi-long distance. But, I thought, if this is something Aaron really wants to get into then I'll help him out a bit. You see, Aaron knows practically nothing about BBQing, so every time we go it's trial and error, and we are learning a lot and making some progress.

Anyways, I thought that for Father's Day it would be a great idea to get him some grilling tools like a pair of tongs, a wire brush, a metal spatula (so he'll stop using my nice kitchen one), etc. Then he'd have the tools to grill. I also went online and found him and awesome book called The BBQ Bible and ordered that for him so that he would have the know how to grill as well. When I went to Home Depot to pick up the tools, I noticed that had a little round 14 inch charcoal grill on sale for $20 and I figured that since I never really got Aaron a birthday present (this is another story entirely, but it wasn't my fault, I told him he could spend $50 of ours along with a $50 gift card he had to Best Buy and pick out something nice that he wanted, and he never got around to spending the $50 of ours, just the gift card, so ya that's the short version, needless to say, I felt like I still had $50 I could spend on him.) I was justified in spending a little extra on Father's Day. So I got the grill.

I brought everything home and wrapped it and put it under the bed so Aaron wouldn't find it. (He always finds where I hide his presents, that's why I wrapped them too, just in case.) Then I set about waiting for Father's Day to roll around. Well....it took forever! So I gave him his present a week early, thinking we could get in some good grilling practice before Father's Day. Then it rained all week.

So today, was the first day we were able to do any grilling at all. We invited our friends Danny and Suzy Park and their two kids Nathan and Kaitlyn (who are Lincoln and Ivan's ages) over to enjoy the BBQ with us. We got a pork loin, and cut it up into little chunks and made a Caribbean marinade I found in Aaron's new BBQ book, and marinaded it all morning. We also found a really yummy recipe for grilled pineapple that we made too. Out of the pork chunks we made shish-ka-bobs. The were very yummy, but the pineapple was by far the best. For dessert Danny went to the store and got the stuff to do S'mores. It's been a long time since I had a S'more, and it was a very tasty treat. the weather was beautiful, the company was great, and the kids were reasonable well behaved, well except Ivan. Not really sure was his trouble was, but he wanted me, and no one else, to hold him and rock him the whole time.

Oh, and Lincoln, poor kid, he was riding a little plastic scooter thing and it was up on the grass, which is elevated and bordered on the outside edge by railroad ties, and then below the railroad ties is the asphalt, anyways, he was riding this scooter, and scooted it right over the edge of the railroad tie. The scooter nose dived and Lincoln fell forward over the front of the scooter and landed face first on the asphalt. He's got a really good scrape that starts on his forehead and goes all the way down his nose. Here's a picture of it after Aaron got all the gravel washed off of his face. It doesn't look as bad in this picture, because you can't really see it, but I bet it looks bad once it all scabs over.