Party of Five.

Oh man, I just giggled at that title. :P

A few weeks back (maybe just one week, I don't remember, it's running together), Meggie suggested a holiday dinner party to be held at her and her husband's beautiful downtown Boston condo. Well with Friday also being Katie's birthday it was a perfect time to kill two birds with one stone.

I got switched to a Friday shift at the last minute, but got an 8-5, which normally would be my ideal shift, but I was a little tired in the morning... quickly solved with an iced coffee. The e-mail system wasn't working and blah blah, it was a bad shift with good company. I was rushing around the apartment to get ready because I was sure we'd be slammed with traffic going into Boston (about a 45 minute drive with no stops) and I didn't want to make everyone wait for us. I got off at about 4:45, went to pick Jeff up at work (side note: HE FINALLY GOT A HAIRCUT. And we have that 100 square feet of our apartment back!).

Well, there was no traffic. Who knew?

Usually when I go into Boston I park by my old apartment on Mission Hill because it's easy parking, even though it's sort of a longish trek to Meg's downtown apartment from there (about 35 minutes with walking and T). Well, Meg suggested I park at her apartment building instead -- I'm not sure how much it cost, only that Meg and Troy took care of it for me and that it was a VERY nice change of pace. In the morning the valet guy delivered the car ... high class. Thanks guys!!!!

Ok enough of the boring how we got there stuff. Since we hit no traffic we were a little early (45 minutes -- oops!) Meg and Troy were still hard at work in the kitchen. They are so cute. They had a lot of friendly banter about the cooking times of the meals (Meg wants to keep the food IN the oven, Troy wants to take it out). In the end, everything was perfect!

Right before dinner, Jeff and I gave the group their presents (a food dehydrator for Katie, which she wanted, and some DVDs for the married couple.) Jeff also made everyone cards, it's his new favorite thing. They were so cute. He also burned three Christmas CDs, and made a cover for them. It read: "A Werschaible Christmas" and he superimposed a picture of us onto an ornament, and put Christmas hats on our heads. I wish I had taken a pic! It was pretty funny.

So what did we have...

Along with some cheese, hummus and crackers, we had these cheese and ham puffs and some spankinopia (OK, I don't feel like looking up the spelling, but you know the spinach pastry things). I think I was on my third glass of wine before dinner...

Cornish hen with stuffing. Squash and bacon risotto. Snow peas. Yum!!! I especially loved the risotto which I was skeptical of, but it turned out sooooooo good!

I've never had a small hen like that before, so I didn't really know the best way to attack it. Well, by the end, as Jeff put it "it looked like a cherry bomb went off in mine." Meanwhile, Katie was absolutely surgeon-like, it was amazing. (I took pictures of this, but decided it was sort of unappetizing to look at, so you can just imagine my poultry carcass in your head.)

After dinner we talked and laughed etc etc ...

... Jeff and I taking a lovely photo (this one for the Christmas card maybe? :P)

... and an artsy photo from Katie ...

...Katie and her finger tambourines. Don't ask....

... and I showed Katie some of my yoga moves, and then she showed me some of hers ( did I mention there was wine?)...

... and then dessert!!! Mini-chocolate trifles. Yum! I was so full!

We chatted a little more then went to bed. In the morning, (seriously Bressette's, 6:45 a.m. is not awake time on a Saturday ;) Meg made bacon and eggs and apparently is single handedly trying to ruin my diet. 

Jeff and I planned to go see a movie but we stopped at TWO movie theaters and nothing good was playing! We were bummed. But it gave me a chance to take Jeff to Whole Foods. We sampled for lunch, bough a lot of expensive food (everything there is so tempting), including sushi which I hadn't had in forever. I love it, but I wish it wasn't so pricey!!

We came home, I napped. I woke up and Jeff and I are just enjoying the night together... we watched Elf and he just went to get some more Mad Men DVDs. Two perfect nights :)