We’re pretty much the first in our regular friend circle to have a kid. Arlyn and Ellery have Mika, but she’s (I think) 11 now, so she’s not as demanding as our wee baby Derek. Anyway, to keep our social life social, we’ve been hosting BBQs at our house once a month or so. Our friends get to eat for free and drink for cheap, and we get to see a bunch of people we love for WAY less than the cost of cabs and a sitter and going out. Win-win.
I’ve been pretty shitty about documenting them this summer, so I decided that I needed to get my feces consolidated on that point. We were totally expecting this to be a pretty tame shindig. Tyler and Leslie are in Edmonton. Darren got a cold (which means no Kelsea either). Dave and Owen had to work. That’s about half of our regulars right there, so we were honestly expecting maybe 5 or 6 people, but we ended up with over 20!
People started coming around 4:30, and since we have awesome friends, they entertained Mr. D while I got stuff laid out.
Even the dudes like our kid. And Derek likes his Uncle Junior.
But he likes his hat more.
Aunty Shut Up Claire is also pretty fun. Oh, and we’re all gonna ignore the fact that my kid is outside with no shoes on. Frankly, we’re all lucky he even agreed to wear shorts. He is not really down with the diaper changes and getting dressed lately. Lots of roll-off-the-change-table suicide attempts and screaming like his clothes are made of LAVA.
While Mike was BBQing and I was laying out veggie trays and the like, our male guests were enjoying Mike’s latest project – an arcade machine. It’s not one of the stand up neo-geo ones. It’s actually a side table he got off of craigslist that he drilled holes into and mounted buttons and a roll ball into to make a giant arcade controller. It gets hooked up to his PC, which has arcade software on it, and all of this gets hooked up to our tv. Eventually, it will have a PC inside it, and we’ll mount a TV on the wall behind it to make a full arcade setup, but what we have is good for now. Unfortunately, 10 minutes into that we had our first arcade injury. Jay got his finger caught playing Golden Tee and sprained it pretty badly. Poor Jay. 
The guy hanging out in the background of half of these pictures is Mark. He is pretty quiet, generally, but is apparently a master of the photobomb. I’m not sure if it’s intentional.
Blossom the 3 doors over kitty decided to join the party.
Anyway, we all ate too much food, and then Baby Derek went back into his little bed around 7, and we all hung out and ate more and drank and played arcade and chatted until midnight or so. Good times!