I hung up some pictures today. It’s a momentous occasion. Why? Lemme ‘splain.

Picture it. Sicily, 1942. A young Mussolini had come to power…… let’s try this again.

Picture it. Christmas, 2008. I bought a set of 10 shadow boxes for my wife for Christmas. I selected various family photos, got them printed at our local CVS, and placed them within each frame. My wife is happy, and we decide to hang them up in the stairway landing upstairs. Since we’re planning to have the house painted, we decide to hold off on hanging the frames up. Why hang them up, when we’ll just have to do it again after painting the house.

Months go by, as we continually postpone painting the house. Hanging the pictures becomes an inside joke. March 2010, the house is painted, and I finally hung up all 10 frames. I couldn’t do it myself. Joshua was my assistant, and he did a nice job handing me my hammer, holding the laser level, and handing me each new frame.

It’s not complete. We have to replace one picture with a better landscape photo, and we need to find a better photo for the frame in the center (professional family photo?), but it’s up!  Sorry for the low quality cameraphone picture, but it’s all I had available. It’s probably strange to you that I’m elated to hang up picture frames. The reason for my elation is simple. We’ve been “on hold” for a long time with redecorating and making other little fixes to the house. Some things have changed here and there since 2005, but we’ve just started making the bigger changes. Waiting to paint the house has delayed making the living room nicer, hanging up family photos, and other stuff too small to mention. Minor in the grand scheme of things, but to me it always felt like part of our life was in a holding pattern, forever waiting. Now, it feels like life is moving again.

And that is a good reason to feel elated.

Josh helped me hang up these picture frames

Every month, a circle of our close friends get together to celebrate those celebrating birthdays that month. In March, it’s just both of our kids. To celebrate, we hosted a party Saturday night for the kids, and invited some of our friends. We (really, just my wife, but shouldn’t I get credit too?) had planned a sumptuous home-cooked middle-eastern meal, but various snafus occurred this week, and there was simply no time to get all the ingredients and cook. Instead, we placed a last-minute order to our local Indian restaurant for some delicious entrees.

Party at our house	Catered dinner
Plexy & Sheba	Lesh & Lily play Pictionary

We don’t have a lot of people over very often, and always forget how much work goes into hosting a party. It’s not easy to get the house all clean and spiffy (our kids certainly don’t help), and there’s a lot to do! After some of the guests started to arrive, I drafted Vijay and Sunil to accompany me for a liquor and grocery store run. Later, I made a separate run to pick up dinner.

Apart from the leftover tasks that we had after guests started arriving, our friends helped out with some stuff, and everything else fell into place. The weather was great, the house was nicely decorated, most people could make it, and the food was delicious. Along with the great dinner party conversation and tasty food, we all played Pictionary for entertainment. I think the party broke up around 12:30am, so I think it went extremely well. Photos are posted for your amusement. We should have people over more often.