Mom says, "Don't Forget to Knock"

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      We spent Saturday evening attending a progressive dinner. A progressive dinner is a fun event that includes food, friends and moving quickly from house to house. Generally, there are 3 or 4 meal courses, each served at a different home. Our party Saturday night included appetizers and drinks at one home from 6-7 pm. We all jumped into our cars and moved to a second home for soups, chowders, chili and salads from 7-9. Finally, after another move, we ended the evening with desserts at our final stop.

     I have been to progressive dinners that offer four courses; appetizers, soups at the second house, salad and a main course at a 3rd house, followed by dessert. That generally is too much food, and the soup and salad course tends to be a better option. Each couple takes a food item to one of the houses, and the hostess also prepares an item or few to serve. It is really a fun way to spend an evening. The food is usually fabulous and the changing of houses generally means the changing of your seating partners with each course.

     Are you still wondering about the title of this post? I'm getting to that. One thing that is fairly common at a progressive dinner, is walking into the homes without ringing the doorbell. Generally people are coming in groups, the hostess is very busy and the noise level tends to cover the sound of knocking or ringing. On Saturday night, our first two houses we were familiar with. The dessert house belonged to a couple that I don't know well. We asked for directions and we were told to "turn right on this street and then just watch for all the cars". Easy...right?

     I was with my husband and a close friend who was the hostess for the soup course. We were the last car to leave house #2, because my friend had to turn off lights, blow out candles etc. We drove out towards the lake, found the street and turned right. A few houses down the street there was obviously a party...lots of cars in the driveway. You can see where this is going, can't you? I was the first one to the door, followed by my friend and my husband. I opened the front door and immediately saw two women sitting at the foot of the stairway just inside. I did not know them, but it still didn't "click". After all, some people only go to certain courses and I don't always know everyone. I did realize that there were kids in the next room and my brain was slowly processing that fact. The women said, "come on in" at about the same time my girlfriend stopped behind me and said, "oh"!

     Needless to say, wrong party...wrong house. I crashed my first party at 50-something. We all realized at the same time what had happened. The women pointed us down the street about 3 houses, our phones started ringing with the rest of our group who were watching from the correct driveway and laughing their heads off, and we were apologizing and laughing our way back to the car. We did find out that the party we "crashed" was a memorial birthday party for the homeowner's young husband who had passed away months before. We had noticed the women had on matching t-shirts with crosses on them, but we assumed it was someone's 40th birthday. Finding out the party theme made us feel even worse. In all honesty the first party seemed to be fun and the women were very gracious to us. After all, we did walk in without knocking. That will never happen again! Lesson learned.

This is my 99th post! You know what that means...my next post will be a giveaway!