And now we all need a very long nap....

This weekend we hosted our second annual Ludwig Oktoberfest. I think we're going to go ahead and put it down in the record books as a success. We had round-about 40 people in attendance, and we had enough food for all of them, so that's a winner to me. We also had some perfect fall weather...and Clemson beat Virginia Tech to round out the day.

Some highlights:
I hope to one day have an authentic dirndl to wear to match Chris's authenticity with his lederhosen, but I have to work up to that. Chris did bring me a cool German shirt when he came home from his last overseas sojourn. And of course Max had his mini-hosen, so we were looking like legitimate Ludwigs :)

We had to up our game this year and increase our seating to 3 tables. We have 2 of our own so we still had to borrow one. Not sure what we'll do when our "source" moves back to Germany, because we certainly don't have room to store 3 of these tables in our garage! So here is everyone enjoying our German fare.

 The menu:

• Brats!
• Soft pretzels (we decreased the size from last year and I think it was a good move - anyone? agree? disagree?)
• grape and gouda cheese skewers
• Cucumber/dill salad
• Potato salad
• Meat salad
• Obatzda
• Noodle salad (some people call this pasta salad)
• "Joanie's Pretzels" - the recipe was given to us by a German so therefore we consider this a German treat :)
• and of course beer

Look at that German go! And look at that beautiful day.

Max, of course, stayed busy the whole day. He had lots of duties that he had to attend to, including:

Being a DJ (with a little thieving from ladies' purses on the side apparently)

Bartending

Entertaining his guests

and supervising the children (from this picture it's clear that he wasn't so effective at that task.)

But don't worry, Max was able to kick back and enjoy the Oktoberfest after his work was done.

He sampled the food

and the drinks



Not really; he wasn't able to reach the beer and I do NOT condone under-age drinking.



He cut loose and had some fun

and made some new friends

(and had some bonding time with his cousin Bennie, whose name may actually be Benny...it's a similar confusion to the Lympi/Limpie/Lympie scenario)

All-in-all, a great day with family and friends to celebrate Oktoberfest and the start of fall. There are some things we'll do differently next year, such as preparing more of the food in advance, (right Chris?) and eliminating from the invitation some of the guests who never respond (sorry, slackers, your loss!)...and maybe we'll perfect our Oktoberfest-hosting in a decade or so.
It has taken most of the day today to restore the house to it's original condition and I think we are all in need of another weekend to recover. Also, a huge shout-out to our buddy Frank, below, who helped us set up, grill, serve guests, baby wrangle, and clean up. Hope he's free to come over from Germany again for the 3rd Annual Ludwig Oktoberfest!! (along with Bernd, aka OpiLu with his accordian!)
Until next year,... Prost!