Ce-le-brate good times!

Stuart and I hosted a BBQ on Sunday.  Why? Well, it was the date that let us combine Father's Day, the Summer Solstice and the one year anniversary of taking possession of the house.  And I think it went pretty well.

We snuck out early in the day to walk Ursa and then took her for a bath.  We've finally been able to trim off the last of the damaged fur (without shaving her right down) and now she looks and feels great.  And I have to say that I was very happy with her during the party - she was very well behaved!  I also gave Dad his Father's Day present before the guests started arriving.  He'd asked for 1.1mm pencil, since he has a bunch of the lead, but it's not a standard size anymore and I had to do some searching. I ended up getting him a Retro 51 pencil and I think he like it.

The weather had been questionable to miserable all week, so we were making plans for squishing 20+ people into the house, if free-range roaming in the yard wasn't feasible.  In the end, we set up most of the food inside, then let people free-flow through the house and yard as they pleased.  We ended up with about 80% sunny weather and 20% showers passing through, so it worked out fairly nicely.

As usual, we did a potluck, since with our crowd, we always end up with a nice mix of yummy food.  I put three chickens to brine ahead of time, then did them up with three different dry rubs that morning: one Asian, one spicy and one with lemon and herb.  Stuart put them on the rotisserie and cooked them in the bbq.  They turned out astonishingly tasty.  We also had Cherry Tomato Crisp, herb buns, home made bread, couscous salad, 7 Layer dip, a cracker tray with herb goat cheese, a tomato and Boccaccio salad, a peach and blue cheese salad, a fruit tray, a veg tray, onigiri, chocolate and cream cheese cupcakes and I'm sure I'm missing stuff!

My parents came down from Edmonton to attend, my sister arrived with her family and we got a lot of our "usual" crowd.  I'd also invited Katie, who's being slowly drawn into our group and was happy that she came.  A couple of our friends from the old dog park came and my former co-worker Erin also showed up.  It was slightly smaller overall than our housewarming party, which was great; I was still kept on my toes, but I did get to steal a few moments here and there to talk to people.

Our first guest arrived just before 3pm and I think the last of them trailed out around 9pm.  We didn't set any records, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves.  My parents stayed the night before hitting the road back to Edmonton, which was great because Mom helped clean up!

We might have to make this an annual thing.  (I just have to decide whether or not to move in off Father's Day as many people declined in favour of family gatherings.  Do I want a bigger crowd or not?)