Happy Easter!

This Easter, Forrest and I invited our friends over for a little "dinner" at 3pm. After a rainy week, I was pleased to see that the weekend was just filled with clear skies and sunshine! Most of our locally based friends had family plans for the kiddies, but for everyone else there was our casa. And boy oh boy was the conversation ROWDY! I think I burned ALL of the calories from my dinner laughing my butt off with these ladies...and well, Sal always hams it up pretty well for us.

Linh, Vy, me, Hollis and Hiroko (the ladies). My sorority sisters from college - note: the vast majority of our sorority sisters look like Hollis, not like the LVH and me...but since we traveled in a pack, people always assumed we belonged to an asian sorority - funny huh?

Hiroko and Linh like to give things up for lent every year (just for fun) even though neither of them are Catholic or even remotely Christian. Hiroko even goes to church on sundays....but has not been officially baptised so unlike the rest of us, God can't actually punish her for doing anything wrong because she didn't sign up on the enrollment form...she's just auditing the class.

After giving up alcohol ENTIRELY this year for lent, Hiroko was miraculously able to show up at the casa all primed and primed with her veggie side contribution. When I talked to her on the phone at noon, I was convinced that she wasn't going to make it....four drinks in already, I hadn't heard her that trashed in awhile. And amazingly, after dinner and some good youtube watching, she headed out to The Tipsy Pig by 7pm for another fiesta.

Linh however had a more interesting lent sacrifice. She gave up "binge drinking" which was later re-labeled to "unhealthy alcohol consumption" meaning what you say? Meaning the doctor told her that not drinking during the week then having 6 (lie, it was more like 10) drinks on a Sat night is binge drinking.... so she limited herself to 3 drinks in a 24 hour period and said drinks could only be red wine (given the beneficial properties of tannins, etc).....but she should have clarified WHO was pouring these glasses....

Spread for dinner. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the potluck! We only had to prepare a ham and dessert...and supply the dishware. It is so awesome. Vy brought a pasta salad... Hiroko brought the greens... Hollis + Sal brought the apps and Sam was supposed to bring salad but given his flight from Vegas was delayed, I subbed in for him.

OMG I FREAKING LOVE HOLIDAYS!!!!! NO longer can Forrest deny me the joys of celebrating holidays :) Well he will continue to rain on my personal parade but with the arrival of Donut, there is no way he can deny our daughter Easter Egg Hunts, Halloween costumes, EVERYTHING!!!!!