Day 2-The Rest of the Gang is Here!

With Sam, Emily and Rupert all here, I began preparing our "American Dinner" for the crew.  It had been decided by my kids that I would make two meals for the crew; one that would include Mom's Famous Meatloaf and the other a formal British dinner served on fine china with Waterford and Sterling.
 While I worked in the kitchen, the crew began setting up egads of gear, lights, cameras, and computers in the dining room.  It was explained to the kids that this room was now off limits and that fingers of the offending hands would be pulled off one by one should ANYTHING disappear!
Our menu for the night (as requested by the masses) was Mom's Famous Meatloaf, smashers (mashed potatoes for my American friends), salad and mini corn muffins.  And what would a true American meal be without a homemade apple pie for dessert!
About two hours before dinner was to be served the last member of our troop arrived-Tim. We affectionately named him the Jolly Green Giant turned Brit.  For those of us who are vertically challenged, anyone over 5'3" could fit the profile but really, this guy was flippen tall!  How tall was he?  So tall that he ducked in places I didn't even know we had!
Tim was our sound guy.  He's the guy that follows out of camera view with the large duster and suitcase.  He looks a bit like a pack mule and a bit like ...well...the Jolly Green Giant!
 Tim was a bit shy when we first met him and I would have to imagine a lot overwhelmed.  Couple that with his  mere 25 years of existence and single status and he had to have wondered where the hell he had landed.  He does major movies and documentaries all over the US and is used to "miking" the stars...not 9 kids and 2 parents!
Once seated for our "American meal", we were surprised to find out that none of our Brit crew had ever had meatloaf.  Now I could have really run with this one! I could have used soooo many of the standard meatloaf lines and jokes but, not knowing our humor (yet), I thought it best to simply be gracious, accept the compliments and remind the kids not to throw their veggies at each other.
Once again we marched on with the dinner ritual.  By now, Sam and Emily were one-day seasoned pros but Rupert and Tim didn't have a clue what that meant.
"Mom, can we talk about our day?"
"Rupert you can go first- remember, you can't talk about PE or lunch."
I don't remember exactly what he replied but he did it with a great deal of enthusiasm and child like humor!
Tim was next and he was quick to follow suit.
Yep...all would be fine with this crew!  Spontaneous, humorous and compassionate- yep, we would be fine.

Once done with dinner and trivia (BTW Tim and I kicked major ASS!!!!)  we moved on to the plans for our first day of filming.  Sam had a big list of amazing ideas and the crew jargon was flying! The plan was to film Lara and Gabe first thing in the morning (to Brits that's shy of half eight) collecting eggs and bringing them into the house for breakfast. Once that shooting was done we were going to make Saturday morning breakfast, film weekend chores (mucking, woodwork, etc.) and then head out to the beach for some play.   The weather was set to cooperate and we were all completely psyched to finally get started!