The Dinner Party

Like anyone, my extended family is pretty weird. (No, Jeff, I don't mean you. SMH) I'm mostly talking about my grandparents on Dad's side. It's not like I have any bad feelings towards them. On the contrary, I'm really grateful for them in a lot of ways: having my dad, buying the ranch in Montana, selling part of said ranch to Dad, or presents at Christmas time, even if it was Power Ranger pajamas... K, so again, nothing but love. I just don't think they were ready to be grandparents when I was born, seeing as they still had kids at home themselves. So we didn't have much of a relationship growing up, but we're good that way. Sure, they nearly ran me off the road last month and almost hit me while driving down Main Street, but it was unintentional.

Now the background has been laid out there, they did something that was actually really cool and a major attempt at being good grandparents: a dinner party with the older grandkids. Seeing as Dad is one of 7 and his youngest sister is on like her 9th or 14th kid, (I lose track) there's a lot of us grandkids. So again, this was pretty cool. And getting all of us together, you just know something funny is gonna go down. And if it doesn't happen on its own, we'll make it happen!

We arrived at the house and did a little mingling and stuff waiting for everyone to get there. After all were accounted for, we received the formal welcome from Grandpa, with the instruction that we were to mingle some more. So we did. Haha. Then we started dinner.

Overall, dinner was pretty uneventful. There were some rolls "passed" at high rates of speed through the air between myself and Tim, a few mishaps with the candle-lighting ceremony, and Grandma tried to burn me with the potatoes, but it was nice. Amber and I came prepared by eating something beforehand, because you never know, right?

Grandma's famous jell-o balls.

Grandma trying to burn me with the scalding pan of potatoes.

Potato hug of 2nd degree burns.

The dent in the wall from Mom's chair the last time we ate there. Yeah, probably why we aren't invited much.

After the meal, we played some "games" where we had to write everyone's names down and put each other in order from oldest to youngest. Then do it with our parents. Then with Grandpa and Grandma's family... Yeah, I kinda zoned out for a bit somewhere around there. Definite highlight of the night, though, was during the "game" when Craig got the order of our parents wrong and Grandma hit him with: "You probably feel like a loser!" Oh man, epic. So we continued dropping that one-liner the rest of the night. Loser. ;)

Next we moved into the other room to play yet another game, this time one that everyone could participate in. We passed around a bowl with different questions on slips of paper and took turns answering them. Most of the responses were pretty funny, especially when I responded to my question of "One thing I hope others admire about me is _________." with: "My body." Haha. The best of all went to Tay, though. Bless her heart, she was honest when she shared her most embarrassing moment. Because I love her, I'll just leave it as she passed out in gym class in high school. (You rock, sis.) But, not to be outdone, Grandpa threw out a story of his own... about my cousin Brad... who was there with his girlfriend... What was it? Oh, nothing too bad. I mean, he was only 5 at the time. Just something about seeing a steam engine that was in town and then Grandpa and his dad thinking he ran away, until they saw him on a hill "with his little unit out spraying away." Yep. "Still record distance to this day!" Grandpa concluded. I thought Brad was gonna die. Or his girlfriend. Awesome.

Finally, the party came to a close and we found ourselves hiking back up the stairs (some of us alone with Grandpa... Michelle. Hahaha) to the door. Like I said, it was a really fun night. And I do truly hope we can do it again sometime. After all, we're family...