The "Group Dinner" Tradition

The "Group Dinner" Tradition - where to begin??

Our group of friends has been having "Group Dinner" for about 10 years now. I believe the tradition started in the Spring of 2000. I was teaching 7th grade science at a local middle school and the art teacher there, Lori, had decided to take a group of middle school students on an art appreciation/learning trip to Paris. She had opened the trip up to teachers as well. My English teacher friend, Krista, and I decided that we wanted to go along. I didn't know Lori and Krista extremely well - we were just work friends at that point.

The Paris trip was a blast - lots of walking, talking, and getting to know each other. We all came back with fabulous calf muscles from all of the walking! Once we got home from that trip, we decided that it would be fun to get together once a month for a group dinner to hang out, talk, drink, etc. During that time none of us had any kids and we were able to get together once a month for dinner. Lori and her husband Kevin, Krista and her husband Derek, and Ryan and I were the founding "members" along with another couple who went to Paris with us. We've rotated through a couple of different couples and over the last 6-8 years the core group has been Kevin and Lori, Krista and Derek, me and Ryan, and another teacher from the school, Sheri and her husband Patrick.

Once we all started having kids it got a lot more difficult to get together every month so now we get together every 3 months or so. Sometimes we go out to dinner, sometimes we have dinner at someone's house (we all bring something - kind of potluckish) and sometimes we even go out afterwards to a wine bar (actually I think we've only done that once :) ) or watch a movie at someone's house (while my husband sleeps peacefully on the floor - it's a running joke in the group that if it's after 10:00pm - my husband will be asleep. On the floor - at the table at the restaurant - wherever!).

Recently I started thinking how much fun it would have been if we had taken pictures at each of our Group Dinners. Ten years worth of dinner pictures and after dinner pictures would be awfully entertaining :) So I'm going to try to get as much info and as many photos from our past Group Dinners and post them here. I'm also going to start documenting our many Group Dinner adventures from here on out!

I'm going to go searching for all of our past Group Dinner details and photos.... Update to follow!