31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #7—Eat Dinner with Newlyweds & Then Slaughter Them in Yahtzee

First off, I promise that David is going to do his share of Thing-blogging when we get back home to Lubbock. Dave's blog is set up on our desktop compy back home, so I am the designated travel writer in the meantime. Secondly, I just have to say that I am related to some very cool people.

Thirdly, as I was typing the title to this blog post, I felt weird in the moment I was typing "in Yahtzee," because without those crucial two words it becomes a much more macabre post. This reminded me that the best quotation of the dinner party evening was when we were discussing the cooking of meat, and Jon said, "I wonder how one would cook the most dangerous game—man," and David responded with, "The most dangerous game requires the most dangerous spices," and we all applauded this pithy statement. We decided that the most dangerous spices must be a combination of star of anise, coriander, and maybe saffron. No one mentioned any chili spices—perhaps they were too obvious?

ANYWAY......

Jon and Whittney got married this past January, and it was our very awesome pleasure to have a couples' dinner with them tonight (Hollie stayed home and played with Grandma and Aunt Mary, where she was all kinds of trouble I'm sure, though no one will ever admit it). Jon is a professional chef and baker and Whittney isn't too shabby in the kitchen herself, so we ate like royalty (place settings and multiple courses and the whole get-up—and then they apologized for just giving us a "regular" dinner!).

It was fun to reminisce about my and David's own first apartment (Jon and Whittney's is much fancier than ours was), and we chatted about small kitchens, the complications about deciding how to fill wall space, purchase furnishings, and split bookshelves. Dave and I will celebrate our fourth anniversary this August, which still really makes us look like newbies ourselves, but we felt somewhat seasoned as we reflected on how far we've come since our own first stabs at keeping a house together. It was cute to see all of Jon's books on side of the reading nook and all of Whittney's books on the other side. There are some books at home that Dave and I have trouble remembering whose books they originally were—is this copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped yours or mine, originally? Where did we ever pick up this Willa Cather? You thought it was mine? I thought it was yours! etc. Perhaps this just comes from two English majors marrying each other, but I have my suspicions that other married couples know what I mean.

 After dinner, we played a quick round of Yahtzee before needing to get back to the other side of Houston to put our baby to bed. I can't emphasize enough how much I stink at Yahtzee 85% of the time. There is a Grover family rule that every person who gets a Yahtzee must immediately do a victory dance. Each subsequent Yahtzee-getter must add onto the previous Yahtzee-getters' victory dances as part of their own celebration. Playing with several of David's siblings sometimes means having to memorize five or six Yahtzee victory dances by the end of the game. I spent the first couple of years of marriage being generally relieved that I never get Yahtzees.

But tonight, I got two, and the rest of those sorry souls didn't get any. Jon said my victory dances reminded him of Bowie and Jagger's "Dancing in the Street" music video, which I took to be a great compliment (and which he meant to be a great compliment, which is part of why I know I'm related to great people). My final score was 411 points, which is a huge win for me—an unheard of win.

I should also mention the other Grover family Yahtzee rule, which is that each person must give themselves a last name on their score card that represents a celebrity crush (fictional or nonfictional). Tonight we were Jon Deschanel, Whittney Kirk (in honor of Shatner), David Ripley (in honor of Sigourney), and Emily Fiennes (in honor of Ralph, circa Quiz Show—pre-Voldemort).

It goes without saying that I will play by Emily Fiennes again in the future, to see if my luck still holds with that handsome old British fox. (P.S. His full name is Ralph—pronounced more like "Rafe"—Nathaniel Twisleton Wykeham Fiennes. Twisleton! It's incredible. That handsome old British fox.)

Hollie, meanwhile, took a bunch of baths in Grandma's awesome bathtub, including an earlier bath with cousins Minnie and Leena (it never ceases to crack me up how often these Houston nieces love to take baths as part of playing at Grandma's house. There's seriously always kids in the bathtubs around here).

Many thanks to Jon and Whittney for a super evening out. We love you crazy newlyweds, and we're so happy for you both.

Thing #7: Eat Dinner with Awesome Newlyweds and then Beat the Pants off of Them in Yahtzee = ACCOMPLISHED.