Over years in St. Louis, Brooke and I found that we enjoyed “hosting,” whether that was for church small groups, family gatherings, or for parties. Up in Iowa, we had our first Oktoberfest party largely because we lived in the middle of nowhere and we rarely had visitors, so we organized a gathering of mostly work friends for a cold and rainy evening.
Flash forward to 2015, now with two kids and still with a house that doesn’t get visitors (aside from family) all that often. At this house, though, we’re a bit closer to other people (including family) and we also know more people from work and the neighborhood. In an attempt at celebrating our German heritage and the end of our garden’s growing season, we organized another Oktoberfest, hopefully the first of many.
The weather ended up being perfect. Seriously, it couldn’t have been any better. There was a chill in the air, the temperature never broke past the low 70s, and the fire was actually useful instead of just decorative. We started the party at 3:00 pm to make life easier for the folks with kids, as we didn’t know how late this thing would go and we didn’t want people to come for dinner and then leave an hour later because it was bedtime.
We had a little over 30 people over during that period of time. Quite a few kids were there, and most of the folks were from Missouri Valley. We had a few neighbors come over, as well as one of Meg’s friends from her old school, so she had a pretty great time. Brooke made potato soup, pretzels and sausages (we ran out of the latter, despite Brooke wondering if we bought too many!), and other folks brought desserts, dips, beer and more. Speaking of beer, I made a German Alt and a Bavarian Hefeweizen. A few over 20 bottles were had, as well as some of the other domestic offerings we provided. All in all, we had a lot to recycle after the party was done!
Ultimately, I think people had a good time. It didn’t go as far into the evening as I’d hoped, but we had people there for over 4 hours, so considering when the event started, that was probably long enough. As kids get older and as we meet more people around here, I bet that’ll change a bit. Still, I think the party was a success and we look forward to doing it again next year!
It’ll be hard to beat the weather from 2015, though…