The Amazing Malskis

Last night we had a great big ol' dinner party to welcome some friends back to Michigan for a couple weeks. They left our lovely state for the warmer climes of California (slight jealousy brewing) to go to grad school back in the beginning of September and were just able to come back to visit for a week or so now for Christmas. It's always hardest when you have a limited amount of time to visit and you want to be able to see everyone but can't make it everywhere. So we figured we would bring everyone together for one night and make it a little easier on them.

We had about 18 people crammed into our living room & dining room and set up three big tables to seat us all. Everyone brought something tasty to eat and a bottle of wine. I cooked up one chicken for each table so we had half "family style" and half "buffet" serving. The food was excellent and the wine flowed freely. We even had mulled hot wine which was so tasty and festive. Mmm...I need to have that more often!




Andy made up a Dinner Playlist for his ipod and we had a great classy mix that seemed to suit everyone that was there. The 'Garden State' soundtrack always seems finds a way onto our dinner mixes as well as the 'Donnie Darko' soundtrack. Good tunes. "No Bebo," was the only request I heard, and that was already taken care of!


Since it was a Christmas-y party, I made up a bunch of sugar cookies and we had a cookie decorating contest! No fancy decorating tools...just spreading knives, a bowl of colored frosting, sprinkles, nuts, chocolate chips and marshmellos. The results were surprising. We had the 'Big Bang Theory'--a star cookie that looked like it exploded, a Martian complete with a mace and Martian seal, several splendid gingerbread guys and lovely angels, and a spiffy Santa Claus who had sold out to the Levi corporation and was wearing jeans instead of his usual red pants. But the top three winners were: a highly overdecorated Christmas tree, an adorable kitty and a gingerbread man with whitey-tightys. Andy gave the last prize out just for the novelty of seeing frosting underwear. Quite impressive.

The boys seemed to be solving the problems of the world while sitting in our living room sipping wine, while the girls played Catch Phrase and laughed uproariously. Every now and then we would rope a boy into playing with us. We are just so fun to be around!





I love you all and thank God that I have such cool friends. Luke & Nikki, I am so glad to have you around for a little while even though I have to say goodbye again so soon. I can't wait until next month--keeping my fingers crossed that we can visit Cali and get some surfing practice in!