New Year's Open House - Plenty Pepper

We had a good open house New Year's Day. We'd invited people around noon and had things in good shape when our first guests arrived a little before one. Actually for a long-time it was just our family and a French family we recently met at church - with two girls - one a few months older than Neil and the other about Ruth Anne's age - plus an older boy. You could see Ruth Anne trying hard to process the French when she's just started settling back into Russian but overall they played well together.


They were packing up for nap time when the second wave hit - a teacher from the international school and two large families to include her students - very nice boys around ten years old who were gaga about Neil. I showed these guys the word search and spot the differences puzzles we'd printed up and they told me, "No, thank you, it's more fun to walk around and talk." Some people are just born diplomats, I guess.

Then I showed the boys the New Yorker cartoon game, which we'd adapted for adults at the party. The younger sisters, wanted in as well, and our house was full of elementary students asking for help with spelling. How do you spell the sound of a dying fish? Oh my, it was funny.





A couple of other families came in the late afternoon, along with a Korean diplomat and his wife. He was very enthusiastic about the crushed red pepper for the Hoppin' John. We didn't think he'd be able to eat all the spoons full of pepper he added to his first serving but he went back for more and did the same thing.

Our last guests left about 7:30 and Ruth Anne crashed by 8. Then Joe made surprisingly short work of the mess in the kitchen and dining room and tried for some quiet time on the couch.