We went to a BBQ!

We went to a bar­be­cue the oth­er night! Holy cow it was so nice to see every­body, and to have that many people all togeth­er… Hos­ted by Rob and Doug, with Mat­t’s broth­er and fam­ily, and our broth­er-in-law, and a friend of his… Matt and I of course, our kids could­n’t be there. So just elev­en people, mostly out­doors… Just… so great to see every­one and be at a social event! In the days lead­ing up to it my buddy Rob and I were toss­ing ideas around, and I said I would bring fruit salad. He said, and it’s fruit sea­son! and I said, “dang, there goes the idea of using all canned fruit (kid­ding of course… fruit salad from canned fruit is not what I had in mind). This got us remin­is­cing about fam­ily din­ners, and spe­cial desserts on spe­cial occa­sions, from canned pears or peaches with ice cream, to ice cream with a spoon­ful of Creme de menthe! And how when I was… I dunno 10? 12? My folks star­ted giv­ing me a small glass of wine with din­ner when we had “fancy” dinners.

So a fancy din­ner meant roast chick­en, or roast beef, or beef strogan­off … some meal that was a bit more inter­est­ing than the stand­ard every­day fare. You could tell when it was a “fancy” din­ner, because my dad would carry the table from the kit­chen through to the din­ing room, coz when I was little we did­n’t have a din­ing room table. With the table in the din­ing room, it would then get a table­cloth and the nice place mats, and we would put spe­cial music on the record play­er, most often this mul­tiple record album of Clas­sic­al waltzes… that was the “fancy din­ner” music.

Ah yes… the simple pleas­ures of childhood!