Farewell, McCulloughs

In keeping with the Saturday party theme, we had a big farewell party for Brian and Farrah at Alice's house.  Naturally, we needed a traditional Jakarta flower board to properly greet our guests.

We had also learned how much fun the photo boards are from the other parties and had to have our own made! We sure love all these kids and hate that Tate and Macy won't be back next year.  The kids just dropped in for some photos and dinner and then enjoyed their own evening at our house.

I sure do love these two women as well! We've been a pretty awesome trio for the past couple of years and it's so hard to know we can't keep up the fun next year....at least in Jakarta.  We're planning to take the party global at some point.

This is probably my favorite photo of the night because it captures all of the fun we have when we get together!  Pure joy!

Amanda made two really amazing cakes.  One for Farrah and Brian, headed to Korea...

...and one for Amanda Morgan, headed to Virgina. 

I thought this captured the sentiment of the evening perfectly! There were some tears, of course, but more laughter than anything else.  Exactly what we wanted.

It was also a reunion with the Mongolian BBQ people here...just as good as we've remembered it! And what's not to love about a catered dinner where everyone gets their dish cook exactly they way they want.

Our entertainment for the first two hours was Alice's incredibly talented piano teacher.  He did not pause or take a break for exactly 120 minutes.  Pretty impressive.

We enjoyed a lot of talking and laughing and eating

The ladies who will (hopefully) be back in August!  Katrice is currently on the fence so we maybe said goodbye to them as well, but we sure hope not!

We had some toasts...

...and some cake...

...and then some karaoke.  The Pavlas' have a mobile karaoke machine now so we'll never have another quiet party!

He may not admit it, but Matt is a pretty dang good singer and he has a great time when you hand him a mic.

Keith, the middle school drama teacher, was a little harder to coax out, but he can sing and perform as well!

Even Festy got in on the action.

As all good things do, our celebration had to come to an end.  These friends are 100% what makes life great here and we're so grateful for each of them! We're going to miss the McCulloughs terribly next year but we have so many happy memories together to keep us going until we meet up again somewhere.