January Dinner Club: Bowling

Our January Dinner Club was not held at anyone's house. Instead we all took a break and met at a restaurant for dinner and then went bowling. I was not too excited about it, really. But it really did end up being a lot of fun. Well, except for the fact that out of our entire group I bowled the absolute WORST. If you know anything about bowling, you'll know that a 33 is rather bad to score. That was my score. I had gutter ball after gutter ball. Mark did really well though. It was a nice change to go out with everyone.

Edit: I did not notice that one of the men was picking his nose when I posted the photo. My husband just busted out laughing and figured I should make a note about this.

Dinner Club Christmas Party (Part II)

Another reason that I LOVE the kitchen in this house is that there's plenty of room. We had 14 people stand around and maneuver comfortably in the kitchen during the beginning/appetizer course while still being able to cook/finish up preparing the meal.

Sprinkles knew Dawn was a cat person and he jumped right up into her lap. She loved it and so did he! But then Theresa (at the very end of the table--she got chopped off so you can't see her in this picture) wanted to hold Sprinkles --without his permission--and he scratched her. He has never done that to anybody in the five years we've had him so I have no idea what got into him!

One of the desserts we had was a mince pie that Kate brought. I had never had mince pie so I just HAD to try it. I don't really like it. At all. But I ate it! Every last bite--because she was sitting at the table with me.

Then came the White Elephant Gift Swap. I had originally sent out an email stating that we would be playing "Dirty Santa" and it got misinterpreted by the majority of the group. They thought that by "dirty" I meant raunchy, distasteful, off color gifts. Thankfully someone mentioned that in passing at Thanksgiving. I was absolutely appaulled that they would even think I would mention something like that! So I sent out an email clarifying what we would be doing and changed it to a white elephant gift swap.

Mark and I didn't have any white elephants laying around the house---one of the perks from moving nine times in ten years is that you get to purge your junk often. So we had to go and buy two. I went to Ross because you can find some bizarre and funny stuff there. So, I bought this terrible awful gift that is really completely useless: a back scratcher that dispenses lotion. Ha! The second gift was what Mark picked out himself and wanted to win it: a garden gnome that looks just like the little Travelocity guy. And you all will NEVER believe this, but it was the most stolen and most wanted gift in the swap!! Can you believe it? And Mark did end up winning it! If you click on the picture below it should enlarge so that you can see the gnome better.

It was a really fun night and everyone had a very good time.

Dinner Club Christmas Party (Part I)

Mark and I hosted our dinner club's christmas party on Dec 19th. I've been trying to post this for some time now but have had trouble with Picasa. So, here it is. Picasa will only let me post 4 pictures to the blog at a time when I use them, so I'm breaking this up into two posts.

My parents sent me the BEST cookbook ever for my birthday and I made an appetizer from it.

I always hate when I go somewhere and have no idea what food is in the dish. So, my parents got me some really cool place card holders to use. I used the backs of Mark's old business cards to write the name of the food. So many people commented on how great this was!

Here's Mark doing some of the stove top cooking. I cannot even begin to tell you how wonderful the new stove is. And the second oven in the bottom is pure heaven when I need to keep things warm or bake at a different temp.

This is another NP coworker of mine, Jean. No idea what we were discussing.

New Year's Eve

We didn't spend New Year's Eve at a party, but rather we out to eat and then went to a hockey game. Mark got the firm tickets so we had fantastic 10th row seats. It is the one sport that I think it's beneficial to sit really close to the ice to see what is going on. We've had seats at pro football games that we around the 10th row and 50 yd line that I wouldn't give you fifty cents for because we were so close that I could not tell what was going on!! I was quite worried about getting hit in the head with a puck. The game was a lot of fun to watch, but I will admit that it is a tad violent as fights broke out on the ice several times. And the referees just let them hit each other! The rest of the night was relatively uneventful as we got home and watched the ball drop and then went to bed. The end.

If you have a weak stomach, skip this post

Happy New Year! This morning Miss Marble can running through the back door with a bird. Of course, she ran through the kitchen, under the dining room table and into the study where she dropped it. I screamed for Mark and then she picked it back up and ran into the entry hall and dropped it at the bottom of the stairs where she began plucking the feathers off of it. Blech. And I scream again for Mark. What does he do? He grabs the camera and starts taking pictures.

Are you totally grossed out yet? The mess has been cleaned up now.