Dinner date

My co-worker, Josh, invited Chris and I over for dinner last night with his wife here in town. We'd been to their house last year for St. Patty's day so we knew we got along great with them. Josh had mentioned to me that his wife had recently switched them over to a Paleo diet which is very close to what we eat so I volunteered to make dessert.

Grain and dairy free brownies with dairy free (coconut) peppermint chip ice cream. We went over there at 6:30 pm and were having such a good time we didn't leave until almost 11:00 pm, way past our bedtime! The highlight our of evening was Josh introducing us to a new drink - orange juice mixed with whipped cream flavored vodka. It tastes exactly like an orange julius.

We brought two meads to share; blackberry and lemon which were big hits. We've made tentative plans to go to Wine Time together and then once we clean our humble abode we'll invite them over for dinner here. Look at us, being little social butterflies.

Travel bound

It's never too early for me to start planning our next vacation, especially when it's somewhere as historically interesting as Boston. Boston's been our list for awhile, and since Chris likely couldn't get the time off from his new job that we'd need to do our European cruise this year, we decided on a shorter East Coast trip instead.

We're eyeballing the end of September or beginning of October so I've got a little time to work on our itinerary and restaurants. And now that I've got another year before planning our cruise I decided to go on the website for Viking River Cruises, which we see on PBS before every episode of Downton Abbey, and order a catalog. First we were interested in a Norwegian cruise to the Baltic capitals with stops in Denmark, Finland, Russia, Germany, Estonia, and Sweden. But now, after reading the Viking River Cruise catalog, we think that we'd really like to do their Cities of Light cruise which starts in Paris with multiple stops in Luxembourg and Germany before taking a motorcoach into Prague in the Czech Republic for the last few days. It's 12 days which sounds just long enough to enjoy all the stops. And what's nice about Viking is that all of the excursions are included in the price, plus the added bonus of being on the interior rivers enjoying a more scenic voyage. Again, probably something we'll do in the fall. Now, if only I can wait that long!

Dominator of the dice

Tonight was my last minute rescheduled bunko night which was, much to my delight, in Chico. In fact, she only lives two streets behind us. And somehow through trickery and magic I won the prize for "most wins".

An honest to God prize I actually like - a jewelry holder! And the gal who hosted makes beaded jewelry and included a pair of beaded earrings in the little pink bag. Next month is my month to host so hopefully I can find some equally awesome gifts to dazzle them with. I mean, besides autographed photos of myself.

Party till midnight

While we don't usually have plans for New Years Eve, this year my bible study put together a couples evening at Kari's where we all brought finger foods and drinks to share.

Unfortunately, I had to work that day before coming home to get ready so I made sure to buy food that was pre-made like shrimp cocktail and tortilla roll-ups. Much to our surprise, we made much later than we'd anticipated - 11:00 pm! We all agreed that we would celebrate east coast new years, but we kept going strong for hours afterwards. By the time we got home it was no big deal to stay up until midnight, after which we promptly went to bed so we could sleep off all those bottles of mead we drank!