Last week we had an open house for Zack, to celebrate his graduation from high school.  It was a great party, like all the ones we've had in the last few years have been.  We've been throwing open houses since Ty graduated from South west seven years ago.  We've gotten good at it.

There are a million ways to have an open house and I've been to most of them.  Some are catered, some are home made, some are fancy full dinners and some are all desserts.  They are all fun.

Somewhere around our third one, Jay decided that we had to find a simple, easy way to do it.  Here's what we came up with; all finger food.  No utensils; no mess.  We serve brats and hot dogs.  No cake; cake needs forks.  We make bars.  That was actually Ty's idea a few years ago.  He said he preferred rice crispy bars to cake any day of the week.

There are also a lot of little kids in the family and I really hate finding mostly full pop cans all over the house and yard, so no pop.  We do a huge barrel of koolaid for the kids.  (There's usually pop and beer hidden in the garage fridge for grownups.  Grownups almost never take one sip of a beer and then leave the can hidden behind the recliner.  No, they finish the beer and then pass out behind the recliner.

We no longer serve tequila at our shindigs.  Not since Jay's 50th birthday party a few years back.  No tequila around here til 2055.  That's when the moratorium will be lifted.

At one point in the afternoon, one of the cousins on Jay's side of the family noticed the picture of my brother JP on the fridge.  This cousin knows JP but hasn't seen him in years.

"Is JP still using that publicity photo?"  he asked me, "That thing must be twenty years old!"

"This one?"

"Yeah."

"That was taken last year."

"I hate him."

JP is aging better than most of us. 

The open house was fun, the weather was perfect and most of the family showed up.  Unlike many of our earlier parties, this one actually ended at a reasonable hour.  The last of the guests left when it started to rain, right around ten o'clock.


Later in the week, Jay and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary.  He had class that night so we went to Cafe Maud, a nifty little place right up the street that opened a few months ago.  Jay had brunched there before, but I hadn't eaten there.  I had a grilled chicken panini and Jay had a salmon blt.  Both were delicious.  He was home from class early enough for us to drink some champagne while watching the sunset from our hill.  Then we had a late dinner of pork chops.  My brother and his wife live a mile away and their anniversary is the day after ours.  Sometimes we drop over there with a bottle of wine to toast both days but this year we'd downed too much champagne to be driving around the neighborhood at night.  So Andy and Vi, I hope you cracked your own bottle of wine!

It's no wonder I'm exhausted.  June is too much fun.

 

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