Day 5 of ? Potluck... Bring it on!!!!

So doing this from my phone is challenging...

My kids today must have thought I lost my mind preparing for the days festivities and like any good kids would do they rose to the occasion to observe their dad try and pull it off.
There was a traveling couple who performs skits to not just entertain but educate as well.  They have been fulltimers on the road for 25 years.  The performance was awesome and even made the teens laugh and smile too.  They are known as the Act!vated Story Theatre.  http://activatedstorytheatre.com
After the performance all the families were going to get together for a potluck.  Seemed simple enough right.  Take care of six kids... get them to a performance then... to a potluck.  So this needed a plan and for those who understand Marine lingo this means BAMCIS!  (This where you all go what???? Like a minion)  Yeah that's right to accomplish this daunting task was going to take the Marines!  Did this help you say?  Actually no it made it worse and this is where I go wrong with my kids all the time.  First I explained what we were doing and they seemed to understand but they slowly lost it.  With all the meaningless task that just had to be done before we left made the goal almost impossible to reach.
So one task that was beyond there scope was to finish making the bed... here is where it gets funny last night they were tasked with it since we just laundered the sheets and blankets.   Simple enough unless the two tasked with it fall asleep doing it so this carried over to today.  It took them over 12 hours to complete this and keeping them on task was almost impossible but these two little ones are like oil and water.  So you say it took 12 hours to make a bed you say.  No actually the worked played and slept together for twelve hours without one physical altercation.  That was amazing in and of itself.
So as they worked on that I prepared the meal to take to the potluck and the oldest two boys helped entertain the youngest two.  They were unaware of this and you have to be tricky when tasking the oldest boy.  It has to be his idea for him to participate.  So we prepared a pasta bake (of course we're Sicilian) and a salad and put it in the crock pot and out the door we went and actually arrived on time to not only the performance but the potluck as well.
In other news Bandito escaped again today and Micah's heart sank as he wasn't fast enough and it was dark out.  We lost track of him in the thick palm bushes but thankfully he was led by his stomach as I played the canned cat food song by popping the lid he came running home.
One other awesome and noteworthy event that occurred today was the 4 year-old playing on his brother's guitar and trying to sing Doolie.  Its a bluegrass song that he has become fond of ever since we met the Weavers, they are a great influence on these kids and help me convince Jennifer that bluegrass is just awesome.