Cookout at Mike and Michelle’s

For Memorial Day, we ended out to visit Michelle and Mike at their new house. We arrived to find a lot of guests, a lot of dogs, and tons of great food set up out back.

Also? A fantastic oversized Jenga set, which provide to be a wonderful centerpiece for the backyard. I loved this concept, and totally need to get some wood and copy this… and make ourselves our own set. For our backyard. In 2015.

The first few games were played with numerous players. Lots of tense moments… and some spectacular endings.

After playing a practice group game, Mike and I set ourselves to go head-to-head for a round of Speed Jenga. We didn’t have a chess clock handy, so we tried to run two separate timers on our phones, and set them side by side. That approach went out the window, as it required too much stopping and starting between two devices.

We ended up having Michelle control Mike’s phone, and Liz control my phone. When Mike was trying to move a piece, his clock was counting down from 3:00 to zero. When he placed his block, Michelle would stop his clock and Liz would start mine.

We did a round with 3:00 each, and that worked pretty well (Mike won that one). We decided to do another round and only gave ourselves 2:00 each, and that I think was the sweet spot. The game got very interesting much faster, and forced both of us to take bigger risks that we wouldn’t otherwise take. Fun stuff – can’t wait to try that again!

Liz and Michelle took the opportunity to take some photos of a sweat they both knitted. Given how hot it was outside, this was a serious commitment – all in the name of blogging!

Meg, with a black cardigan that Liz secretly decorated with felt hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds. I didn’t quite get the joke here, but I think Meg ran into some difficulties with her version and didn’t end up completing it.

L to R it’s Meg and Alyssa.

Fun day hanging out with some very nice folks. We got to eat some great food, got a tour of Michelle and Mike’s lovely home, and I also got to chat with Mike and his friend Adam at length – interesting, good conversations.

We left a little after 5PM, and had a nice ride home – skirting the perimeter of a storm, and making it back home before any of the bad stuff hit. A lovely end to the long weekend.

Related:
Cookout at Jake’s
Thinking About Memorial Day and Robert Bly
Memorial Day Service, Christian Hills Church