Our Freedom party with Paul, Ben and that other Dave was such a great time that I definately want to keep it down in written posterity.
On Tuesday night, Ben and his folks came over for a night of food and fun to celebrate the end of Emily's public school career. I cooked upsome quick and easy Mexi-American food and Ben helped his mom out with dessert. They baked an awesome vanilla cake and Ben decorated it with all the style and panache that a 7 year old boy harbors in his wonderfully creative mind.
Ohhhhh, and they brought vanilla ice cream, too. Of course, Dave still made some yummy ice cream for us older folks (banana with pound cake, candied walnuts and semi-sweet chocolate swirls)to enjoy, just because he loves to show off his ice cream making talents.
It's awesome to share a meal with good friends, since it makes eating and talking a comfortable social experience instead of an evening full of tension and worries about whether or not your children's terrible table manners are going to be the talk of the town after the night is over.
After dinner, while the kids got on with their maniacal destruction of our downstairs, Paula and I gabbed and gabbed about random topics from the sublime to the insane and the Daves messed about with their instruments.
My Dave is very, very new to the guitar but began playing violin when he was a child and "other Dave" (his official title in this house) plays guitar very well and collects all kinds of awesome guitars as a side hobby.
Sometime in the late evening hours, we realized that Emily had hit her fun limit and crashed out like a college freshman during Sorority Rush week. Poor girl, I put her to bed mostly naked after I realized that she'd sat in her dessert at some point and had a lovely collection of light pink frosting spots all across the back of her skort.
By the end of the playdate, which started breaking up a bit after midnight, the only kids left awake were our two night-owls, Ben and Anna. There was lots of thank you'ing and goodbye'ing and a smattering of gloriously inappropriate inuendo and a few late-night, too tired tears from Ben at the door when he discovered his father's misspent youth as a murderer who sentenced caterpillars to death by water fountain drowning.
Finally, when the house was quiet and everybody was in their appropriate sleeping place, I sat down with a cup of hot tea and a good story and read till I could feel my eyes drifting shut.
It was, all in all, a most wonderful celebration of the end of a era in our house. An era that was, thankfully, short and not too incredibly disasterous. Now we're on to the next great adventure...Homeschooling TWO kids at the same time.
~L
