Dinner in Queen Creek

Brendan and Travis got married on November 7th.  When I attend the weddings of people that I am really close to I hate just leaving a gift on the table at the reception, so I didn't take their gift to the wedding.  I  like to actually enjoy watching people open their gift, which totally makes it about me and not them, but whatever.

We had planned on getting together during December.  They came to Elliott's birthday party and were at Monica and Rick's cookie party, but a December dinner never happened.  Then we planned on getting together in early January.  That never happened either.   So, almost three months post wedding, we found ourselves headed to Queen Creek for an al fresco dinner in their backyard on Saturday.  The dinner party wasn't ONLY to give them their wedding gift, but that was a nice bonus.  Monica and Rick were there too because none of us had gotten together in a while. 

A lovely table setting.

A lovely outdoor bar.

Lovely lights.

Lovely kid in tiger pants.

Lovely outdoor fire.

Lovely people.

Lovely pasta dinner.

After we ate dinner Travis went inside to get a knife for the cake.  It was just really funny when he walked back outside with a huge chef's knife.

Lemon velvet cake.

It was also really funny when Brendan put together an after dinner coffee tray inside and returned outside with the largest bottle of coffee creamer I have ever seen.

I thought this was a really nice picture.

But Brendan was kind of an outsider, so I cropped him out.

The gifts!

Gift #1

Gift #2

Gift #3

After dinner, dessert and gifts we went back to the fire.

And I put on my cowl and arm warmers because, despite Brendan wearing summer gear in the above picture, it was cold.

Monica was sitting peacefully next to the fire when something fell from the tree and hit her in the head.  We thought it was a leaf until Brendan pointed out that the "leaf" was crawling on the chair.

See it on the big blue stripe?

So then Monica tossed it to the ground.

See it in the crack?  He apparently lived through several traumatic falling events.

We got Elliott ready for bed before we left at post 10:00 pm.  He fell asleep half way home and then woke up the next morning WAAAAAAY too early for his mother, who had enjoyed several too many glasses of wine.