Never-Ending Cookouts

I promised to catch everyone up a bit more on our recent week of vacation. Now that it’s been a full day back in the office catching up, vacation last week feels like a long time ago. How does that happen!?

Ben loves entertaining and having people over. I like it too but tend to get caught up with whether or not the house looks clean enough or if we have enough food / the right food for people to eat. We ended up hosting a dinner night on Friday and invited four couples. Since we’ve been to all of their houses for dinner, it seemed like the time to return the hospitality!

We decided on a simple menu and made a ton of burgers with the usual fixings, potato chips, tortilla chips & salsa, veggies, fruit, and fudge brownies.

One of the girls has Celiac disease so I was careful to make everything using gluten-free ingredients (except for the hamburger buns). We checked labels on everything and raced back for a last-minute bottle of Worcestershire sauce for the burgers.

The food was gobbled up, everyone was happy, and the weather was beyond incredible so we made a fire in the back yard and sat outside with drinks and music. We wrapped things up outside around 11pm, a few people left, and the rest of us sat in the kitchen playing cards.

Plenty of laughter and fun times with this group!

Silly boys:

We completely over-bought on the hamburgers and had tons and tons left over so we invited my family over the following night to help us out. These were 1/2# burgers (very big) and somehow Alex managed to put 3 of them down without an issue. I had trouble with just one!

My plate:

It was super easy whipping this meal together – I just cut up more fruit and we were ready to go. Plus the house was sparkling clean from the night before. I’m so crazy about fruit – I just can’t get enough. Oh – and PEACHES are arriving next month. I seriously cannot wait…

Here are the handsome men. How did BOTH mom and me avoid being in this picture?? Also, how does Alex tan so well? I’m not sure the picture does justice to how dark he is already. That kid can just walk outside and be tanned. Lucky duck.

Despite the help devouring our extra burgers, we STILL had enough left over for dinner Sunday and Monday night. Whew! Next time we’ll know to make them a little bit smaller. But, you learn right?

I do love having people over. Sometimes it feels like (especially when I was busy with school) we get into the same old boring routine. We need to make the time for more fun stuff! Life is short, right?

Time to head to work. It looks like another gorgeous day is in the works. Love it!