I didn’t write about this last weekend as Willow’s death kind of took the fun right out of me. But on July 17, I had the joy of having a big chunk of my family over at our house. Ron, Jessie, and the children; as well as Connie and Dennis were all in the lower mainland at the same time. I took the day off work and Irene and I invited folks over for a BBQ, and despite me being a bit out of sorts (my “day off work” turned out to be a “half day off work”) … I think things went pretty well.
I’ve uploaded a few pictures, which you can see by clicking on the selected image below:
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I bought a big Coleman cooler and filled it and my 25 year old “little” cooler with ice- beer and wine coolers in the big chest, pop in the little one. My theory: if everyone could serve drinks themselves, I’d have more time to cook and visit. This worked out well, and my limited social expertise is thereby expanded. I then made another good call: I pre-cooked a batch of chicken wings and, when folks started arriving, finished them on the barbeque so there were finger snacks right away. Irene did a veggie tray, and this added to to the “low effort” food supplies.
The fact that I had to work early in the day had disrupted my planning: as my friend Chris will attest, I’m not really a spur of the moment, toss things together kind of person. That means I started the gathering with a higher than usual stress level, and the steps noted above made a huge difference in terms of freeing me up to de-stress. Later in the afternoon I cooked up some good steak that Irene had bought from her favorite meat shop.
But mostly, I was happy to be able to have a few brews and visit with people. Really, this was our “social” christening of our deck, and it worked out well enough to make me proud. I’m lucky I have such a forgiving and (generally) easy to please family!