Well, I had a pretty good time this weekend. After all of the activity here Saturday night and Sunday morning I’m feeling a bit lonely in the big house tonight.

The big party started about 6:30 or 7pm on Saturday night when Katie and Abby showed up. Katie had offered to help me with the shopping and setting up for the party but had had kind of a wild night the night before and was confined to her bed all day. But that’s okay. Somehow I managed to get all the shopping done and I think the only thing I forgot was Coke, which my brother got later. But Katie and Abby showed up a little early and helped me with some of the preparations. And they also helped me start eating the crackers and cheese. Mmmm.

Before too long people started showing up. I can’t remember the order that people came so I’m just going to list them all in no particular order. My brother Matt and his wife Jenny, Steve and Linzy, Suzanne and Jim, Rachel and Shawn, Thad and Rebecca, Kenneth, Kaari, Chey, Kelly, Lauralee, Vasilia, and Magnus.


I made 6 pizzas in the fire burning brick oven throughout the night. With varying degrees of success. There were definitely some leftovers (that had been left out all night) in the morning that had to be thrown away. There were also cheese and crackers, some nuts, and peanut M&Ms (which were a big hit). I am pretty sure that no one went too hungry during the party. There was also lots of drinking going on. Let’s see. Katie and Abby brought a fine boxed wine. Rachel and Shawn brought a drunk trunk with two bottles of very flavored wine. I can’t now remember what Suzanne and Jim brought. Steve and Linzy brought a 15 pack of some fine Schlitz Malt Liquor and the huge bottle of Southern Comfort I had started at their last party. Thad and Rebecca brought a six pack of Zima XXX and a 40 of Olde English. The 4 ladies and Magnus brought some sparkling non-alcoholic drink and a bottle of wine. Kenneth brought a bottle of wine. I’m sure there’s more that I can’t remember. Like I mentioned, Matt ran out and bought some Coke. I only remembered the Coke when Steve and Linzy showed up with the SoCo and I realized I’d need something else to mix it with.

I hardly feel like I did enough during the night. And as is bound to happen to the host of a party of any size, I don’t feel like I was able to hang out with anyone for long enough. There are a few people that I feel like I ignored. I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen just chatting with people and waiting for more guests to arrive. I tended the brick oven and made pizzas as people wanted them. I know that some people hit a few golf balls in the golf pit, even though the game itself didn’t work. A number of people played some pool. Later in the night we hooked up Steve’s Playstation2 and fired up Guitar Hero (thanks Steve!) which I think everyone enjoyed, of course. I saw a few people playing some blackjack for a while. And of course there was chatting going on between everyone all through the night.

At one point I was asked to come and play some Guitar Hero because no one was quite getting it or playing very well. I set down my drink and ran over to the TV area. I would show these people how it was done. Well, Kenneth and I played some song on the Easy difficulty. Ummm, he kicked my butt with twice as many points as I had. I was quite embarrassed and Steve was hanging his head and hiding his face in shame. So I chose another song but put it on Medium–I was thinking that there weren’t enough notes and the tempo was too slow on the Easy song. Well, I think we all know what happened next. I kicked some major butt by multiple 10s of thousands of points with over 94% of the notes hit thank you very much. Keep in mind that I had had a lot to drink that night and not nearly as much practice as at Steve’s party.

After a while the first people started leaving, which made me very sad. Though a lot of people stayed pretty darn late. The last group of people left at about 3:30am, not counting the people who stayed over night.