No pressure.

This weekend marks a pretty momentus occasion: Josh's mom and husband are finally coming out to KC to visit.

After nearly 5 and a half years of him living in the midwest, they are coming out and spending a long weekend with us. A long weekend where they will make it into town before Josh does. A long weekend where Josh, Ruth (his mom) and I are running the KC 1/2 Marathon. A long weekend where I have to really break out my alternative housewifery type skills and show everyone how truly amazing I am.

What size am I? Size awesome.

The problem with this lies in the fact that due to recent developments at my job, I haven't been at home hardly at all in the last 45 days. So my to do list is as follows:

1. Deep clean entire house.

2. Wash the dog.

3. Plan menus.

4. Grocery shop.

5. Find my sanity.

The last of which I plan on doing with a pedicure. Oh, and somewhere in there actually believe that I will finish the half marathon without dying. Which remains to be seen. I haven't actually been training like I should. Like I said: traveling, slight job change, stress... all of this equals Abigail being incredibly lazy and/or making priorities that aren't running.

But I've decided that tonight I am attacking the menu planning. We have a few obstacles, kiddies:

1. Josh's mom's husband Hal is a vegetarian. Normally this would not be an issue, because I was nearly one myself for two years, and can really rock a good no-meat dish. But Josh can't do that. So instead I have this crazy idea of making tons of sides. Hopefully I can make it work.

2. Race Weekend = Carbs. As we all know my inner fat kid loves her some carbs. So whatever I am making Friday has to be pretty carb heavy for the race Saturday. Pasta per chance?

3. Number of meals, unsure. When people come visit I have a dilemma. I want to show them some authentic KC grub, which normally means BBQ, but also, dammit they need to eat some authentic Abby cuisine. I'm a good cook. I have all the cookbooks to prove it. (See below) So I don't know exactly in this 4 day period just how many meals I have to plan for. So let's safely assume I have three dinners, a lunch, and a brunch. The rest? We go out!

So off I go to attack the menus. Luckily I have my arsenal below: Cookbooks.