Friend Chowdah

This weekend was long and boisterous. It was a hobbit party. It truly was. We had party guests from 1 PM Saturday until 10.30 PM that night. Our houseguests stayed over until the following afternoon, when we all went clamming and had some more people come back for that.

G did indeed hijack the initial festivities and the big girls had a dance party in her newly minted room while the youngers tore up Nick's room and bounced around outside. Then they alllllllllll joined up outside for the daddy-led yard games while the amused parents wandered around yapping. It was a little grey for G's wet slide party, so we didn't bust out the sprinkler.

Schnaygirl counted heads, and until she did that at 10 PM I had no idea we'd had 13 adults and 15 children.

Holy

shit.

Aside from the requisite pretzels and corn chips and stuff, we used an entire 1/4 sheet cake and a Dutch oven full of Grandaddy's rice pilaf. We had nuggets and fries for the kids and they ate all those as well. I never run out of party food, and we did that day. Even so, Schnayboy screwed up the courage to have Dave's insanity sauce on his pilaf again. Life was good.

G opened her gifts and it was really sweet. There wasn't one random present in the bunch. G is old enough that she is known to people now, and she got some really creative, thoughtful gifts. It made her happy and I was pretty touched.

Guests began to leave so P-Daddy fired up the bonfire. That's an invitation to stay, which some of our friends took. Indiegirl even left, tucked her kids in for the night and came back, and most of us sat around the fire sipping hooch while the kids sat with the rest of us inside watching Nanny McPhee. My kids were the first to crash, so I got to go to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep around 11.45.

The next day Schnayboy came over earlier than planned because we'd scored a bunk bed on freecycle. P-daddy and Schnayboy lit out of here for FAR EAST TACOMA (BLECH) to meet these people at 10 AM. I watched Schnaybaby (a tow-headed 2 yo boy who chirps) and that kind of relegated us to cereal for breakfast because I didn't want to do my big giant breakfast thing without P-daddy watching our kids and with an extra baby, fuhgeddaboudit.

Well? Freecycle assholes didn't even show up. Wasted our time, wasted my guests' time and just generally pooped on the idea of freecycle altogether. This rarely happens to me, and when it does, I take it with a grain of salt. This time though, it dragged several of our friends into it and that pissed me off.

I was further enraged that in my feeble sleep-deprived attempt to make early espresso, I neglected to put water in my stovestop espresso machine and I melted the handle and the o-rings together. What an idiot. NO latte, and now, no latte maker! UGH UGH UGH.

I did get the green goo finished, which was a good thing since the Mommies who lovingly slathered the children in nuclear-holocaust SPF sunscreen forgot to put it on themselves. Sunburns = owie.

So, the men came back and we trooped down to the beach. P-daddy got some clams for his chowder (which he made Monday night) and we generally all collapsed in a heap in the sunshine-filled back yard. That's right, sunshine. Hence no chowder.

After hiking the beach slope, we came home and the kids had their sprinkler party with G after all. That's a beautiful sight and sound there, my friends. A nice end to a good weekend.