Saturday night we hosted some neighbors for a Mexican dinner, and it turned out really nicely.
We had invited the Tojos and the Katos over a couple of weeks ago, but it was postponed to Saturday because Kuniko wasn’t feeling so well. This time around she was in good condition, and so the party was on.
Most of Saturday was spent cleaning up our house. It had been a while since I could give it a deep cleaning, and so I worked hard – even moving the furniture and cleaning under the sofa.
The next stage was making pinto beans according to my mother’s secret(?) recipe, and also working on making guacamole and salsa. I wrapped things up by the early afternoon, just when Kuniko got home from work, so we had a chance to indulge in a two hour nap to get ready for the festivities.
The Tojos have been over several times before, so they are veterans. This was the first time for the Katos. I taught Mr. Kato in my class at work – he works at the same place I do, and it was everyone’s first chance to meet Ms. Kato and their daughter Miyu. Miyu is eight years old and was very well behaved and very polite.
We had a big dinner of burritos, quesadillas, and chips/salsa/guacamole and the conversations were all over the place. Mr. Tojo and Mr. Kato work in the same department, and so sometimes the topic was work, but I did my best to steer it towards something that everyone might be interested in. Ms. Kato turned out to be a former nurse which was very interesting, and she gave some off-the-cuff medical advice to Kuniko.
We had plenty of beer and wine, and it was going well, but I thought that Miyu looked a little bored. I downloaded an easy game on the ipad but she ran through it so quickly it was a little too easy. I went upstairs to dig through our stash and then I found what I was looking for. I went downstairs in triumph. It was time to play Jenga.
Miyu really got into it, and unexpectedly, so did everyone else. At one point we had everyone on the floor playing, and we had to push some furniture out of the way to make space. I was glad I thought to clean there.
It was a fun night, and I hope they enjoyed their time at our house. I’m hoping we can do it again in the future.
The rest of the weekend we lounged around the house, recovered as much energy as possible watching movies and reading books. We still have a ton of leftovers in the fridge, so we’ll be good until the end of the week.
Our next party is during Golden Week when Yoshi, Mamiko and Akira come over. What to cook… what to cook?
