It was funny to see him walk in with his heavy coat, his laptop bag and the daily mail in his hands to a room full of people with a drink of some sort in one hand and ready to party!
He later told me that he was soooo tired that day that coming home from work he'd secretly wished that my "diner" wouldn't last too long so he could hit the bed early.... well, that didn't work out too well!! ;)
In any case he was really surprised and happy to see everyone at our place. It was the first time (except for our wedding day) that several of his friends from different groups were all in the same room : there was his ex-boss from France Telecom Eric (aka his squash buddy) and his wife Stéphanie, there was his colleagues from work (aka our poker buddies) Arnaud, Denis, Olivier, Ilker and his wife Ozgé, there was his friends from highschool Marion and Jean, there was his friends from his music band (aka our Wii playing buddies) : Sylvain, Laurent and Diane, there was his college friend (and wedding witness) Nico and his girlfriend Irena all the way from Geneva and there was even friends of friends (who of course have become our friends by now) such as Sophie !!!
The party went really well I think. Although our place is really too small to hold that many people somehow it worked out fine (although I did notice Laurent & Diane spent most of the night standing up but I hope is was more by choice than by necessity) and everybody kinda found their place around the room.
For the food I had a first round of easy botana going on while we were waiting for André to arrive : peanuts, olives, cheese squares, cherry tomatoes, sliced carrots and cucumbers, chips, etc.
Once he got home and the botana started to run low I put in the first round of baked apetizers (curtesy of Picard) : mini cheese canapés, bacon wrapped prunes, mini croc monsieurs, salty ham&olive / goat cheese&tomato cakes, etc. This was nice because by this time the party was in full swing and I could eclipse myself in the kitchen and start putting the main course in the oven: 4 large salmon & spinach feuilltés (from chez Picard)
In the meantime Diane and Laurent helped me start passing out served plates of green tossed salad (which, along with the cake, was the only thing I actually cooked myself!) while the salmon and the stuffed veggies (also Picard) were in the oven.
Once the salmon and stuffed veggies were served (a big hit : no leftovers on the plates!) it was time for le cadeau! le cadeau! We all presented André with his first present : The almighty Wii (you got it, eventually I did get enough people to pitch in and it worked out ok). I wish I had a picture of his face when he saw what it was... I like to think he was almost as happy as when the mayor pronounced us husband and wife ;-)
Then came the gift from his office friends, a nice bottle of brandy, which unfortunetly I can't remember the name of but I do know that it came in a lovely wooden box (I can just see our next poker match : all the fellas stting around around the table drinking brandy and smoking cigars.... ergh!) The guys also gave him a bottle of Burgundy wine which I thought was a great idea as it set the premises for my present (which btw André still was not aware of).
By the time the cake came out everyone was salivating to hook up the Wii and start playing. We all sang joyeaux anniversaire with a hint of urgency and had him blow out the candles leaving him little time to make a wish, clapped and yeah'ed, gobbled our slice of cake and (patiently?) waited while André hooked up all the cables and put in the batteries in each remote control. Of course, you can imagine that nobody paid very much attention to my home made cheesecake during all this, which is actually a good thing because it was a poor sight and looked nothing like the picture in the recepie (some people did say it was good, though maybe they were just being nice)
So once the Wii was hooked it was time to play and as you can see it was the battle of the sexes :
By to 2:30am I could keep my eyes open no longer. Most of the guests had left already and only André, Denis, Arnaud and Nico were still battling it out on the Wii field. I thanked them for coming to the party, wished everyone a good night and casually told André before heading to our room that he might want to get some sleep soon being that we had to get up in 3 hours for Part 2 of his B-day..... Needless to say 10 minutes later he'd dispatched the guys and came to bed. ;)
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