I’ll do my best to mention as many people who attended our party this past Saturday, and also read the blog, as I can remember. I’ll start by thanking my mom who did a lot of heavy lifting by getting the tent and primary set up, Julia and Laura for decorating, Jeff for dealing with the speaker, JC for making sure we had meatballs and lasagna, and Sam for acquiring the music saving dongle and playlist. Another big thank you for all the people who attended who I’ll get to shortly. “Thanks for coming” was my first line to any guest and I genuinely meant it. You can’t throw a good party unless people attend and we are lucky enough to have a lot of friends to make a party worth throwing. Shout out to Sam for it being his birthday today.

The Alcohol Committee

It was my job to make sure the party had enough alcohol. I got up at 7:30 on Saturday and it was pouring rain. JC cooked me a nice breakfast to provide energy for the day. I had reserved 2 quarter kegs which I was pretty sure would last the night, but I also bought 60 Bud Lights, 36 craft beers (New Belgium, Victory, and Dogfish Head Variety Packs) and 60 seltzers. What I failed to anticipate was how to get the alcohol cold in a short period of time as this much liquid won’t cool in a fridge when bought warm over 6 hours. This led to me purchasing about 10 packs of 22 lb ice bags to accelerate the cooling process. I’d get a bunch cold and swap them with the ones in the fridge. Amazingly, my strategy worked and all the alcohol was cold when the guests arrived at 4pm.

What’s tough about having this type of party is that I know almost everyone and most of these people I hadn’t seen in years. This means that the people who you see all the time take a backseat to the people you haven’t seen in ages. I got a chance to catch up with a lot of our close family and people who knew me when I was little. I enjoy the banter back and forth and try to make everyone feel welcomed. This goes out to the entire Moore family and all their cute kids, the Wedzielewski’s (John W has worked for Stortz Tools for over 50 years) and Uncle Ted’s daughters and significant others (Clark took the most shots that evening by his count).

The Guest List

Who could say this wasn’t an awesome party when we had Bill Schmidt and Andrew Gourlay, Splitting Tens Top commenters aside from Not Dave, in one area. I’m not sure if they embarked on any conversation together, but JKash was trying to be Gourlay’s blog agent not recognizing managing that guy is like herding cats. For every good joke he makes he whiffs on 2 and offends minorities with the others. We also had the entire Schmidt family there and I know Chris enjoys reading the site so I have to make sure she gets a mention especially because when she showed up, the rain stopped. Our golf group of Bud, Evan, and Adam were all there playing Putter Ball which is a great party game. Weens failed to show up and I’m sure he now realizes what a mistake it was to get called out in this ever popular blog post. Steve McGrath brought his daughter who was kind enough to give me 3 goldfish. Wayne Merkle brought a few of his family and in his own words “embarrassed himself on the bball court”. Wacker enlightened me to the disc golf lingo of “are we banging today?” Who can forget CK4 and Nikkii and the classic story of the Taylor Made 0’s on the golf course the day before. I don’t think Pat reads this but congratulations to him and Erin on bringing Connor into the world. I’m sure there were a few people there I forgot to mention but it certainly isn’t on purpose. I hope most people had a good time.

After the wreckage was cleared from a night that lasted until after 1am, we killed one keg, and still had about 7/8ths of other, and about 60 canned beers which means I over prepared by a bit. There was some left over food and I just ate the lasagna and meatballs and it was still good. After being saved with no rain during the hours we had the party it was a rousing success. I think people had a good time and there weren’t any horrific incidents. It’s a fair amount of running around getting it all set up but it was worth it in the end. Perhaps we’ll throw this party annually from here on out. If anyone wants to text me or email me any pictures, please do and I can add them to the post. Thanks for coming!