Thank You Dinner Party

Last night our next door neighbor, Noreen, hosted a dinner party for us and four other couples in our ward. She did this because she wanted to thank us (well, mostly Russ) for helping her out late one night a few months ago. You know that book line, "It was a dark and stormy night?" Well, it was dark. Wasn't stormy, but was quite windy. About midnight she heard some banging and went out into her garage to see if she could figure out what was making the noise and the door to her house in her garage slammed shut behind her, locking her out. Of course, she had happened to decide this one night that since it was such a warm night, she would just sleep in her garments and not any pajamas. So she sat there for about an hour, trying to decide what would be best to do. Thought of a friend who has a key to her house, but it would be a bit of a walk and she pictured a policeman driving by and seeing her like that. She thought about waiting until it got light and then coming to our house for help and decided that wasn't a good idea. So she finally just came over to our house and rang the doorbell.

I don't think I've ever seen Russ jump out of bed so quickly. He went to the door and flipped on the outside light and opened it. She had kind of been hiding off to the side and he said, "Oh, I didn't see you at first." She said, "I didn't really want you to see me." She quickly explained what happened and Russ said he'd be over to help. I grabbed a robe of mine and handed it to Russ to give to her. In the meantime, she went into her backyard and hid behind a rose bush (which she later said made her feel like Eve hiding in the bushes). Russ handed her the robe, which she was grateful for. She had left her bedroom window open, so Russ climbed up and in through her window and opened the door for her.

She kept telling us that she would like to have us over for dinner to thank us and Russ would always say, "You don't need to do that." She insisted and kept telling us to think of a few other couples to invite. Russ would practically name half the ward. I ended up telling her the ones he would repeat and she set a day to have it. Russ got stuck in traffic and was a half hour late. One of the other couples came late because the husband also got stuck in traffic. They showed up just after Russ.

The dinner was very good and we all had a fun time chatting and eating. She started us out with a salmon chowder (now I'm not one who usually likes seafood, but this tasted pretty good), followed by a green salad. The main course was a stuffed and breaded chicken. We had creme brule (or however you spell that) for dessert. Everyone knew the story of the reason she had the dinner, so one couple brought her a gift of a garbage sack they glued jewels to for her to use the next time she locks herself out without clothes on.

Being just a couple's dinner, we asked a neighbor girl if she could tend the kids. After we got home, Jimmy said, "I don't ever want to go to Grandma's again! I want you to have her tend us every time!" They all had a lot of fun with her. She also had a lot of fun tending them. All in all, it was a fun evening.