Foodies

 MORNING GLORY: Our alarms went off at 5 a.m. today.

The MPA student body was not pleased. (Meanwhile, I'd been awake since 3, so what the heck, it was way past time to get up.)

We were in the (already loaded from the night before) car and on the road by 5:45. We dropped Christian off at his workplace in SoDo (south of downtown), and continued on to Queen Anne. 

Despite the trip being in the midst of #Viadoom (one of this already gridlocked city's freeways is 100 percent shut down), we made OK time. Actually really good time. We had time to stop at the store for a couple more items and then arrived at the kids' former school by 6:30-ish.

Fortunately, our favorite custodian ever was already there and let us in. We worked through our set up schedule. ... We cleaned the kitchen, set up the toppings and juice stations, set up the pay/donation station, got the books for breakfast videos ready to go, and soon enough, it became time to get the pancake griddles ready.

That's when the real fun started. We plugged in the first griddle and sparks and flames shot out of the wall toward us. Woo hoo! So that was a dead (well, live wire) outcome. Naturally, I consulted our favorite custodian. The fire shooting outlet was taped over and donned with a danger sign.

Fortunately, I kind of know the wiring in the looks-new-but-old-wiring building well enough to know what outlets are on which circuit and we managed to get three griddles going without tripping anything. 

Hiccoughs aside, the fundraising pancake feed went well. We filled a lot of bellies and raised a little money. So, it's all good.

Also, I think it's worth noting that the 'books with breakfast' part of our party was a HUGE hit. Parents and children *loved* the Story Time From Space  videos we screened!

They walked in and marveled at the sight of books being read in microgravity and had numerous questions about the ISS and other NASA programs. Naturally, we were happy to answer those questions. :)  We love doing NASA outreach.

PUT TO THE TEST: Yesterday, we took care of something I've been meaning to do for too many days/weeks/months/years. The kids and I got current on our food service workers' licenses.

I kind of sprung the class/test on the kids with no warning. I asked them to gather their laptops and log in to a URL.  We went through about 45 minutes of often cringe-worthy videos. 

 I honestly think we could have passed the test, easily, without the 'class,' but literally better safe than sorry

Afterward, CJ immediately said, "This is something I could add to my resume."

Exactly!