July 17-18

For the past 2 years, we've had at least one big party at our house. The first year was a housewarming/Joe's birthday party and last year was the rehearsal dinner for Todd and Anna. The housewarming/birthday party lasted all night. I think the last of the guests finally left around 1 am.


This year, we had a party just because. Joe made a lot of the food Friday night and we had to store it at his brother's house (thanks Tony!!). Joe cooked all night long while hung out and watched him. I kept asking him if he wanted help but he kept saying no.


Saturday morning consisted of finishing up the last minute things and running back and forth to the store for things we forgot. Joe started the meat and putting the salads together while I finished cleaning.


We had about 15 people that showed up with enough food for 50. We had 2 different crock pots of BBQ pork, kielbasa, beef tenderloin, Asian short ribs (Tony - you rock!), broccoli salad, tortellini salad, chick pea and angel hair pasta salad, twice baked potato casserole, taco dip and potato chips.

After everyone stuffed themselves we played game after game of ladder ball. People started clearing out around 9 or 9:30 (yes we are getting older) and I started to clean. Normally my parents attend these shindigs and they do it for me. Oh how I missed them. A huge thanks to Anna who put food in containers for me while rinsed off and loaded the dish washer and did the big stuff by hand.

Everyone except for Todd and Anna were gone by 10 so the four of us sat around our new fire pit (thanks Todd for starting the fire - I have no clue where Joe was) and talked and talked. We sent Todd and Anna home with lots of food (a whole pan of broccoli salad Joe made just for her) and still had a fridge full which came in handy on Sunday since neither of us wanted to do anything!