Grown-up birthday

Once again stealing a spot on the girls' blog to post a few pictures of adult birthday fun.

With several weeks' advance planning, savvy marketing, and a continued influx of energy and enthusiasm, we were delighted (and a little astonished) that we persuaded four couples with new babies (plus older kids) all to get babysitters and join us for an adults-only birthday dinner in downtown Philadelphia. Only a late-breaking case of food poisoning (thanks, Baldwin cafeteria pizza) laid low one of our number. A couple of friends without kids came, too, and there we were, 11 adults out on a Friday night, mostly parents of young children, and no one fell asleep at the table. We didn't even talk about children much.

I've always enjoyed bringing together friends from different parts of my life and have had too few chances to do it recently, so it was a kick to have

-friend (+ wife) from childhood, grades K-8
-friend (+ wife) from college
-friend (+husband) from early parenting days in Princeton
-2 friends (+ one spouse) from the last 18 months at Baldwin
-me and Tom

Despite the disparate origins of the group, sliced and diced another way we had

-7 parents of baby boys born in 2013
-4 psychologists
-3 Jennifers
-3 Wash U. grads

...and a bunch of mojitos and a lot of fun.

So not the greatest phone pictures, but just as a record of the evening (and so Mom can see the dress Alice picked out for me):

 

Birthday cupcakes with the girls before we left. Happened on a great new babysitter, one of my advisees, who gets major points for doing the dishes (including pots) and putting them all away!

 

Jen, Andrew, Jen, Ashley

 Ben, Tom

 Jordana, Joe

 Ashley, Vic, me

 Ben, Tom, lobster

Vic and me

Belated Christmas photos to come...