2nd Annual Pig Roast

Dear vegetarian and vegan friends: Skip this post! There's a lot of meat here.

Just a few short weeks after the hubs and I moved into our house last summer the guy had a crazy idea to throw a pig roast.  It was kind of nuts considering we still had a lot of unpacking to do, but I'm a fan of parties so I went along with his crazy notion.

We had so much fun that we decided to throw a pig roast every August.  When it came time to pick the date for this year's festivities we kept hearing from folks that the second weekend in August was good for them.  That happened to be our five year wedding anniversary and we didn't want to throw an "anniversary party" and therefore we didn't market the pig roast as an anniversary party. 

Silly me forgot to take pictures during the party, but thankfully I have a few to share that a fellow party-goer took with my camera.  I was kind of busy hosting a party for 80 people! 

The festivities began with the hubs purchasing an 8lb brisket from Wegman's.  Apparently the cashier asked him, "you'd buy the whole cow if you could, wouldn't you?"  The hubs immediate response, "do you have one?"

He marinated the brisket and started cooking it at 8:30am! Dude has dedication. 

As a small nod to our wedding I made a desserts table.  The hubs and I had a blue and white candy buffet at our wedding and this time around I ditched the candy and the color scheme, but kept the sweets flowing. My dad's favorite dessert is pineapple upside down cake and I was more than happy to make it for him. Seriously, I think he ate about half of it. 

Red velvet cupcakes have kind of become my signature treat! I think it's because I'm a red head. 

I do happen to have a few vegetarian and vegan friends, so I thought I'd throw them one and make the easiest vegan cupcakes in the world.  Non-vegetarian friends thought they were yummy as well. 

The hubs has really been getting into his grilling this year and has been making his own BBQ sauces.  He made four of his more popular sauces to add to our condiment selection. Even better is I love it when the hubs asks, "can you go to the craft store and pick up mason jars?"  Don't mind if I do! And come home with a few other things! 

In addition to the pig and brisket, the hubs also manned the grill during the beginning of the party and made hot dogs, chicken wings, and hamburgers. Basically if it was a standard BBQ meat product the hubs grilled it! 

I bought bubbles and smores ingredients for the kids, but I guess I forgot that the main attraction for the adults was the pig! 

I haven't shared previously, but after making one too many rounds of Jack and Coke slushies this summer I bought a better blender! Thank goodness because the hubs and I stock piled frozen Coke cubes in freezer bags so I could mass produce Jack and Coke slushies for the pig roast.  I don't think my old blender would have been able to handle the work load.  

Things were going great at the party.  The weather was cooperating. The kids were being adorable playing with sticks, chasing each other, blowing bubbles, etc. The adults were having fun noshing, playing corn hole, and ladder golf.  Things were looking good.

Then mother nature said, enough of this!

And it started to POUR!  I've got to say, it was awesome because it was all hands on deck. Every single person grabbed something and pulled it into the house.  Thankfully it didn't start to rain until around 7pm, so by that time a lot of folks were getting ready to head out anyway.  

I knew once I saw the shots being poured inside that the party was taking a different turn.  The kids went home and the drinking games began!  I finally went to bed at 1:30am and told the guys outside that if they fell asleep with the fire pit still burning the fire would be the least of their worries!  Somewhere around 10pm it stopped raining and we went back outside and made smores.  I guess adults like smores just as much as kids.

The hubs and I had a great time and we were even glad to have a few friends crash at our house. Drinking and driving is NOT cool and we were more than happy to let a few guys sleep things off at the house.  They even appreciated me distributing bottles of water in the morning.  

Looks like we're going to continue to throw a pig roast every August. Hopefully, next year I remember to take a few pictures of all the little things the hubs and I did to make the party a good time. 

This year's pig roast will certainly always hold a special place in our hearts. Call us sappy, but it was amazing that so many of our friends and family came to our house.  Our family members knew it was our anniversary and I'm so grateful that so many members of my family made the trek down from New Jersey and New York.

The icing on the proverbial cake: the 80 guests we had.  At first we thought we had 79 guests and then the hubs thought that we should say 80 because two guests were very pregnant. His rational, two pregnant ladies eat enough for three people.  Turns out, I didn't write down one of our guests name and once we added him in that brought us up to 80 people.  (The hubs and I are total nerds and we track how many people come to a party versus how much food is consumed that way we can make adjustments, if needed, in the amount of food for the next party.)

80 people. The exact same number of people we had at our wedding five years ago.  Thankfully, the weather was a bit better on our wedding day, but we'll take a little rain during a pig roast over rain during our  outdoor wedding ceremony any day of the week.

Marital bliss it is.