Adventures in Entertaining

First of all, let me just say that a middle-of-the-night post is what happens when your friends leave your house at 1:30 AM. We had some friends over tonight, and they all decided to stay late to watch the very last Conan before he moves to Burbank and a new time slot. Being that Conan begins way past my bedtime, I fell asleep on the couch, sitting beside my sister, with my head resting on my shoulder during almost the whole show. Luckily, I think Julie was the only one who noticed. Ha! Anyway, when everyone left, I woke up and now feel totally awake after my hour-long-snooze. Luke is taking a shower, and I figured it was the perfect time to blog since I need to make myself tired again!

Okay, now back to tonight. Every Friday night from 9 - 11, a bunch of the young guys from my church play basketball. I decided that I was sick of sitting at home alone at that time on Friday night, and invited a bunch of girls over for board games. I'm a little embarrassed that our house still needs a little work, so I'd been reluctant to invite too many people over. But I decided that God has called me to open my home for fellowship. I thought maybe we could get a weekly get-together started. I cleaned the whole house from top to bottom and whipped up some snacks to munch on. I set out the board games, popped in a chick flick to play in the background, and prayed that God would use me somehow to serve these women and open my home up to them.

My games were ready to go:
We had puppy chow: Bite-sized pieces of heaven, filling up the bowl I bought as my weekly splurge.
I also made Mexican dip that turned out to be pretty tasty. It had lots of peppers in it. Is there any vegetable that's prettier and more vibrant than a bell pepper?
Here's the finished product. It was delicious! And so simple: a layer of cream cheese, then salsa, then cheddar cheese, and topped off with red, yellow, and green bell peppers.

Here's the whole spread (minus the mini pizza slices I made later!)

Out of the 14 or 15 girls that I invited, 3 showed up: my best friend/neighbor/cousin Rachel, my sister Julie, and my sister-in-law Diana. It turns out that most of the other girls had pretty legitimate excuses, but it was still a little disappointing and discouraging. My mom even showed up and we told her to stay awhile since almost no one else had made it :-P

Luckily, it was a very fun time. And at least 4 girls, including me, had something fun to do on a Friday night when we'd normally be at home without our significant others. I'm not giving up...I'm going to try it again and pray that more girls show up! I would love to start out just hanging out on Friday nights, but eventually grow into a women's Bible study. We'll see what happens.

Here are 3 of the 4 girls who made it: my mom (Ha! I love her, what can I say?) Julie, who is looking a little dazed in this picture, and Rachel. Notice that we are in the attic/Ohio State room. Luke decorated this one, and I pretty much am not a fan. He accidentally put the plastic over the windows this winter BEFORE he painted the brown trim black. The rest of the trim in this room is black and doesn't looke as horrible as this!

Gabby doesn't do well with company. She was POOPED by 9:30, and decided to hide in this bubble-wrap-bag that Luke had lying around for his ebay packaging. Gabby fell asleep in it for about an hour. I think I've written before about how she LOVES plastic bags. Gotta love my weird cat!

After the guys were done playing basketball, they all crashed our party. It was a good thing, though. We played Rock Band, watched some DVR'd Scrubs re-runs, and finished the evening by watching Conan (or sleeping, for me :-P) It was a great night, and it was much more fun than sitting at home by myself!

I pray that God uses our home to bring people in so that we can minister to them and fellowship with them here. This is a total out-of-my-comfort-zone thing, but I've just felt a real calling toward it lately.

Well, I'm officially tired again, and ready to head back into a deep slumber. I don't expect to be up until at least 10:00 tomorrow morning! Is there anything better than a Saturday morning with no obligations? I think not :-)