Saturday Night Dinner—Tom’s Birthday!

Tonight was our fifth Saturday night dinner—and it happened to be Tom’s birthday as well! We had two new families (and one couple who’ve been to a couple dinners) join us—and it was fun (and crazy—with 8 kids!)!

Also as usual, I didn’t even think to take pictures because we were so busy visiting and doing food prep…so the first picture I took was a quick birthday shot of Tom with the dessert he picked (a caramel tres leches cake from Costco…with Owen’s birthday balloon!):

And then a panoramic of the table at dessert time…where it took me more than a few minutes to realize there’s a bunch of panoramic artifacts—like Tom’s hands reappearing on the other side of Katie and a friend’s squished face!

And Katie enjoying the blue frosting on the cupcakes a guest brought for the kids:

As a sidenote, I posted the invite for the next dinner in six weeks (Tom’s work schedule prevented a 4-week plan) and all RSVPs were filled within 24 hours! 🙂

Our inaugural Saturday Night Spaghetti!

Some background…

I love having friends over for dinner. I like making new friends. So when I read this article last year—
Friday Night Meatballs: How to Change Your Life With Pasta (if you have the time to read it, please do!)—it hit a nerve and I immediately knew it was something I wanted to attempt. I promised myself that I would schedule something after the holiday season had settled down. Well, then life happens, and I didn’t actually get to schedule it until the end of January, with the dinner to be mid-February.

I posted the following invitation on Facebook and hoped for some responses:

Spaghetti Dinner - Photograph by Carina Romano
Spaghetti Dinner – Photograph by Carina Romano
[Photograph: Carina Romano]

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Imagine my surprise when the RSVP slots were filled in less than 24 hours!! And lots more people LOVED the idea and promised future participation! 🙂

Unfortunately, the weather didn’t play nice and we had to postpone a week, but the original attendees were all still able to come! And everything went awesome! Six guests (plus kids) was just right. (This house is big, but for a dinner party, six guests is about the limit of dining space. I wish we had more room, or even a good place for another table!) Everyone got along and had a good time talking, the kids were all awesome (Owen had a new Lego buddy and Katie had a friend), and everyone stayed much later than I anticipated (they all left about 9:30). One couple said it was a great idea and they are thinking about starting something similar! Yay! During the event, I even stopped Tom and told him that I was very happy. He agreed it was a good night. 🙂 We both can’t wait to do it again!

Even though it wasn’t BUSY or lots of work, we were both kept busy visiting and prepping and whatnot, so I didn’t take pictures! The only one I took was of the kids’ table:

kids table

And this one was snapped by a guest (everyone liked the aquarium but the girls loved it!):

girls at fish tank

I hope all future dinners go as smoothly as this one did! 🙂

And then, even though it was WAY past the kids’ bedtimes, we let them stay up to watch one TV show to let them calm down. And this happened:

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Housewarming Party!

Prepping the bar!

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My Andrew!

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The kitchen table ended up being the center of the party. We definitely need a bigger kitchen AND a bigger table! 🙂

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Skyping with a good friend who couldn’t make it!

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About 1/3 of the food that we had. Which was way too much. 🙂

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The sign comes out! I gave the background story and told them that since he’s five, you know even if I HAD tried to tell him to do it he would have likely screwed it up, so it had to have been completely random! Everyone LOVED it!

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The only two guests who weren’t Tivo peeps—our realtor (who helped us find this house) and her friend “Moral Support.” 🙂 They got along with everyone and had a good time!

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I learned later that they were making fun of my pantry labeling—this ketchup was the “LAST ONE.” 🙂

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Maggie got along with everyone and actually wasn’t too much of a pain!

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Charlie was right in the thick of things, too. I know she’s the people person cat, but we didn’t think she’d stick around with 25 loud people…but she did. She was in the middle of it for the most part…and didn’t mind the attention! 🙂

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Amy wanted to steal the kids’ minion backpack.

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Those of you who know…KNOW what this box means!

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Rivals…on the chair of truth. I’m not quite sure how it got called that, but by the end of the night it was THE name and probably half the people had been in it. 🙂

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The kids came home from the sitter’s at 8 and stayed up for a bit since there was just so much going on it was way too exciting to go to bed. 🙂

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One of the many, many things I never saw happen until I was looking at other people’s pictures!

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The night was pretty much wrapped up by 10:30 or so, with most of the major cleaning done and the last people leaving about 11 (gone are the days when we were partying hard until 2am!). 🙂

We agreed the party was a great success! There was too much food, lots of laughs, and lots of wine…and no one got hurt and nothing got broken! There was one red wine spill at the very end of the night, but considering how many people were drinking and sloshing red wine glasses it could have been lots worse many times over.

And we can’t wait to do it again!

House Hunting Day 1

I hate DC already.

On our way here, our agent called us to give us the rundown of houses on our list that were already gone. Of our top eight choices, five were gone. FIVE. I mean, we expected some to be gone but not that many! And our top listings weren’t even perfect listings—there were compromises. Which means the remaining ones have even more compromises. Ugh.

So she made some appointments and we met her at the first one—which we immediately loved! Someone else pulled up to look while we were leaving so we had our agent cancel our other showings and go straight to her office to start the process (and Tom went to get the cashiers checks and I sat and panicked—I hate feeling rushed and there might have been other good houses but you have to MOVE when you see something you like).

So she arrived at our hotel with the bad news that there was already an app in on the place…we basically missed out on our first choice house by minutes because the other app was being input as our agent was calling to tell them our app was coming in. 😐 She said we could also put in an app but chances were it would just be a waste of the $80 application fee…unless we wanted to offer more rent (which is apparently very common here)—but it was already over our budget…soooo no.

Have I said I hate house hunting? 🙂

So…without checking my spreadsheet I think we have one or two more of our first choice options left. And the few other places we did drive-bys on after dinner have crap for parking—like one of us would have to park more than a few town homes down and I have NO idea where guests would park. No thank you. My DC friends say to suck it up because that’s life here…but I can’t quite commit to that level of suckage yet.

To make the day worse, we found out the hotel pool is outdoor—and closed, which wasn’t listed anywhere—so Owen is sad (we promised him a pool). And the A/C in our room doesn’t seem to be working. And of course we have the smallest and crappiest Hampton Inn room ever. And Katie didn’t nap!

I’m sure tomorrow will be JUST as fun.