So… I had a wonderful and exhausting weekend. As I wrote about in my March Goals post, it’s. a yearly tradition for us to celebrate some of my close friends from undergrad coming into town for Spring Training games- a tradition we’ve termed “LOVEFEST” and which I look forward to every year.

Thank you Erin for some of my new favorite photos of this kid ❤

I had the joy of attending a game with them this year, something I hadn’t actually done since before my son was born. It was also my first time sitting in lawn seating for a game and I think that is going to be the way to go for a while with the kiddos. We had SUCH a good time exploring a stadium I’d never visited before. I mean, my son got a little antsy about halfway through but he really loved the music and my daughter couldn’t hide her obsession with both tossing a baseball and eating hotdogs.

Aside from the game, we had our traditional dinner of Chino Bandido. Let me break that down for those of you non-Phoenicians… Chino Bandido is a crazy Asian/Mexican food fusion. Their logo and mascot is straight up a panda in a sombrero and the food is not the healthiest/I’m not sure they even have vegan options as my vegetarian options are pretty scant, but hot dang are they delicious. Because this is only available in Arizona, it has become a long standing tradition of this spring training trip. We used to go TO the restaurant for this endeavor, but since having kids this event has moved to our place.

What I discovered from that this weekend is that I love that these people love our family enough to be ok with us not necessarily entertaining them. We have toys out, we don’t have any appetizers or dessert prepared (and really, you can’t top the Chino snickerdoodles anyway so there would be no point in the dessert…), we just break out some beers to have with our dinner, find a place to sit where you can safely put your drinks down out of the reach of the children, and we’re good to go for a night filled with laughter and inside jokes and joy.

It’s really made me reconsider the goals of hospitality vs. entertaining and how I still want to grow my hospitality, but maybe entertaining still wasn’t the right focus for this season. Given our other goals right now, it’s hard to make it fit and it definitely isn’t happening once a week.

I debated throwing out E is for Exercise but… aside from yoga this is basically the only arm work out I know of so I’m not sure I’d have too much to say on the subject…

So… I’m rethinking this focus. And I’m interested in feedback- do I stick with Entertaining as a blog theme this year and just post about it less often? Or do I switch to one of the following:

*Enough- I’m working on cultivating a peaceful home and the idea of simplicity and living with what we have is coming up a lot
*Economical- because one of the reasons I’m worried about entertaining is our focus on budgeting and saving to keep paying down debts and bills
*Encourage- because I feel like in some ways that is HOPEFULLY what the monthly goal posts are doing
*All of the above/bring back the monthly themes
What do you think? No matter what I decide about this “E” focus, I’m insanely grateful for friends who accept my scruffy hospitality and don’t mind that I don’t have it all together when they come over.