How We Cookout

It's July and that must mean it's time for the annual cookout recap.  Or the Bauer BBQ, as I like to call it.  You'll have to click here to see why.

What started the year of my father's retirement party as become just a cookout, nothing fancy, but something everyone expects to do every year.

My sister comes from Maryland, my brother in law's family all comes for it, and there's always a variety of my parents' friends, my friends and my sisters' friends.

In fact, this year, someone drove up while we were well underway and even though I didn't recognize him, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was a friend of someone.  Turns out, he just wanted to pay for another night in the campground, but if he had just walked up and had a kabob, no one would have asked.

For a while, anyway.

Speaking of kabobs, it's a law that we can't have this Bauer BBQ without my kabobs, so I made chicken and steak as always.

31 steak and 27 chicken kabobs.  With yellow squash from my garden.  I had to buy onions, mushrooms and zucchini this year.  Vague recipe here.

As exciting as our cookouts are, that is not a zipline in the picture above!  My uncle put up the colored ball lights you see below and then strung the extension cord across the other side.  All night, I kept thing I should just jump off the deck and zipline right across.

The required Corn Hole game was played until the mosquitoes took over.  In fact, thanks to the mosquitoes, the Bauer BBQ ended quite early and quickly this year.  Usually, we clean up all of the trash but leave all of the tables and everything out until the next day.

Someone said "help clean up" and people were running around dismantling the whole thing  until everything was put way except for the palm tree lights and the fancy scallop shells and colored balls.

Everyone was gone by dark.

There was nothing wildly exciting or catastrophic, so I don't have much to report.

I do, however, want to share my favorite picture of the night.

I call it "A Solemn Ceremony For Flushing A Goldfish".  Not because there was a goldfish involved but because I imagine that's the kind of scene you'd have for such a thing.

I have no idea what was going on.  That was the dessert table.  Someone must have been giving them a tour of the desserts.  It was clearly the most solemn and fascinating event of the night and everyone had to bow their heads in tribute!

Linking here:
http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2015/07/clever-chicks-blog-hop-149-featuring.html
http://www.sewcando.com
http://www.skiptomylou.org