All about last night’s dinner

Dinner last night was FANTASTIC!

There were a few hiccups – like when they showed up at 6:20 when we weren’t expecting them until sometime between 6:30 – 7:00, so I had a dust rag and bottle of Pledge in my hands when they pulled up, and Justin had the vacuum and a bin of trash in his hands.  But hey!  The house was mostly clean.  And dinner took an hour longer to cook so we didn’t sit down to eat until after 8:00.  But hey!  They’re late eaters like we are, so that worked out fine.  And their three kids had trouble finding things to do, but we eventually got them set up with video games in the living room and they were happy!

It really was a great evening, though.  Justin made lasagna from a recipe he found online and it turned out SO GOOD.  We got to use our French oven that we got for our wedding (and we still don’t know who gave it to us!) and we’ve only used that a couple times since we got it.  I’m drooling a little right now thinking about that lasagna.  It was delicious!  And we had garlic bread that went with it (that only burned a little around the edges) and they brought a salad and a bottle of delicious wine.  And we sat around chatting and laughing and it was just really, really fun.

They stayed until a little after 9:00, when the youngest started to melt down because it was past her bedtime and she was having trouble with the video game she was playing with her brother.  She’s an adorable kid.  She’s 5, I think, and a chatty little thing!  When she saw we had a bowl of apples on the counter, she said, “Apples are my favorite food!” and then all night long: “Can I have an apple?”  We said she could have one after dinner, so once we were done and clearing away the plates, she sat at her place and announced “I’m waiting for my apple!”  So I cut an apple in half and gave her one of the halves.  She told me that her brother doesn’t like apples, but she went and told her sister that she was having an apple and, in more of a statement than a question, “Do you want some?”  I’d cut the remaining half of the apple in half, so her sister came and ate one of those sections, while the youngest cheerfully sat and munched away on her half.  And then she came up to me just before they were leaving and asked if she could have the remaining quarter of the apple. 

“Will you eat it all?” I asked her. 
“Yup!” she said. 
“Do you promise?” 
“Yup!”
“Okay.”  And she happily chomped down on that while trying to put on her shoes.

The really funny thing is that they know our neighbors in the house connected to ours.  Two of our neighbor’s kids are in the same class as two of our dinner guest’s kids.  So our neighbors saw the minivan parked in their parking space, recognized it, and knocked on the door to say “Hi.”  Another great part:  Our dinner guests had no idea where their friends lived, so they had no idea they were our neighbors.

Plus, they passed our house last Halloween trick-or-treating while we were handing out candy.  We told them that we were the ones sitting in our open door wearing our pajamas and they remembered us.  And now here we are a year later!

It was a really good time and I enjoyed it a lot.  It was tiring and the kitchen was still a wreck when I left the house this morning (we tidied up most of the rest of the mess, but we just couldn’t touch the kitchen other than putting away the food), but it was a wonderful time.

I think we’re going to have to invite people over for dinner more often!