The Chicago Caper

Last weekend I hosted a murder mystery party. I have done many in the past, but this was the first one I'd done since my single days. I wasn't sure if Nate would enjoy it, since he'd never done one, but I didn't give him a choice in the matter. Lucky for me, he did enjoy it and now I know that my murder mystery party days are not over.

Finding 3 other couples to participate ended up being more of a challenge than I expected. We thought we were all set, but one of the couples had to back out kind-of last minute and gratefully, our neighbor Sherrie's sister, Rose, and her boyfriend were more than willing to step in . It ended up being a very fun group.

Setting up for the party was quite the task. We had gotten our carpets cleaned the week before, so we took advantage of that to move our furniture into different locations for the party. We moved furniture into our living room (which previously only had the two bookcases) and set up our dining room table in the family room so that we had more room around the table.

We did The Chicago Caper which is set in a 1928 speakeasy. For decorations I put up some brown paper on the wall in an attempt to resemble holes in plaster and I picked up some liquor boxes from the liquor store to stack around the room. I also covered the windows with brown paper and a dropcloth.

I set up our living room as a lounge and used the pillows from our bed to add to the look on the couch and then hung the drapes from our bedroom to separate the living room from "da back room".

I had fun setting up the table and experimenting with different ways to fold the napkins. I settled on "The Rose" since it also worked great as a holder for the placecards.

Since we were in a speakeasy, it only made sense to have a bar. My dad kindly agreed to play the bartender and I researched the popular cocktails from the 20's and used my Mocktails recipe book to find some non-alcoholic versions.

With only a few minor glitches at the beginning, everything went as planned and it turned out to be a very fun and enjoyable evening. I look forward to the next one!

The Gents

(Greg, Nate, Rich, James)

The Ladies

(Rose, Sherrie, Me, Mary)

Are You a US Citizen?

Okay, I'm sure the test isn't this simple, but how would you do if it was?

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Our 7th Anniversary

Nate and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary on Saturday. Now that my parents live close we were able to go away for the weekend. I've been itching to go to the theatre more and so Nate suggested that we go down to Cedar City to the Shakespearean Festival, so that's what we did. I purchased tickets for the two plays that were playing in the evenings that weekend- The Tempest and The Mousetrap (not Shakespeare, the festival does about half Shakespeare) and made hotel reservations.
Of course, travel plans never go as smoothly when I'm involved. I love to travel but it always seems like there's some mishap when I'm involved (like flight delays/cancelled flights, lost luggage, mechanical errors, etc). This time it was two things. Nate left work early on Friday so that we could get down to Cedar City in time to check into the hotel and change before the evening's performance of The Tempest.
Since we would be out of town and the kids would be at my parent's house, I figured it would be a good time to have our carpets cleaned (at least the downstairs). I scheduled the carpet cleaners for 2pm, figuring that that would give me enough time to show them the problems spots and get them started before it was time to go. Well, they were running late- really late. Initially they told me they would be about 20 minutes late. No sweat. Plenty of time to still get out on time. When they were 1 hour late and I still hadn't heard from them again, I called them and found out they were still 20 minutes away (which turned into 30 minutes). It was already time for us to leave. I couldn't believe that Nate beat the carpet cleaners to our house. I called my dad to come over so that we could leave the second the cleaners showed up (since I didn't want the cleaners to hang out at our house alone). My dad showed up right before the cleaners did and I ended up spending about 15 minutes talking to the carpet cleaner before we finally made it out the door. So it was 4pm by the time we ended up on our way- after a stop at McDonald's for some food and Costco for gas. Okay, still enough time to get to the play just on time.
Then Nate got a call from work. He accidentally forgot to sign some file back in and needed to do that so that the final work could be done. So now he had to take care of that. We were still able to continue our drive down to Cedar City, but now he would have to sign the file back in once we got there- luckily he had brought his laptop with him and the hotel we were staying at had free WiFi. It's sounds like a simple enough process, but it's time-consuming. We got to Cedar City just before 7pm and while I checked in he got his laptop out and ready. We got to our room, only to find it looking a bit in use (the bed was unmade) and so I went back to the front desk to get another room. Nate ended up just going to the lobby so that he could transfer the file while I straightened the room out. We were upgraded to a suite (in the loosest definition of the word- it was just a slightly bigger room) and I got changed for the play. It was 7:20PM and the play was starting at 7:30. I went to check on Nate in the lobby, only to find him about halfway through the transfer. Argh! It took another 15 minutes to complete and another 5 to confirm with the office and shut down the computer. We ended up being 15 minutes late to the play. And since I had never seen The Tempest before, or even read it, I was a bit lost. Plus, I had a headache from the ordeal of getting there and Nate was tired from going into work early so he could leave early and kept nodding off (plus it was quite warm where we were sitting) and one of the main actors didn't articulate. So we didn't end up enjoying the play as much as we should have. Oh well.
Saturday was much better. We slept in as late as we could without missing the hotel's free continental breakfast and just relaxed the rest of the morning. Then we decided to take a walk around downtown Cedar City (the whole 2 blocks of it). We went in a bunch of stores, ate lunch at a diner, got ice cream at the soda fountain, and walked back to the hotel. We caught up on some of the TV shows we had downloaded and then went to dinner. We made it to the play that night with plenty of time to spare- we even walked to the theatre. We saw The Mousetrap which we were both able to enjoy much more. We weren't tired and I didn't have a headache. It wasn't as hot in the section we were in and the actors were much easier to understand. I didn't think I had read this play before, but about halfway through I realized I had because I knew who the murderer was. This play still wasn't Nate's favorite, but at least he didn't hate it like he did Spamalot.

Sunday morning we also took advantage of the fact that we wouldn't be woken up by the kids and slept in. We made it to breakfast in time and then packed our stuff back into the car and headed home. All in all it was a good trip and nice to get away. And yet, I was still happy to get home and pick up the kids and return to our normal everyday life.