First Time serving Vegan Food to our Dinner Guest

Yesterday was a lot of fun! Luke had a sleep over party with his best friend Brian, Trevor just got home after a long week in Houston, Tx. The girls were excited to have their Dad back as we all were but wanted some Daddy Daughter time. We had plans to have our new friends the Purcell's over for dinner. So of course it was a typical race to the finish to get the house in order, send Trevor out shopping with the girls and me blasting music to get the downstairs of our 2 story home cleaned up and presentable for our dinner that afternoon by 4 pm. I dont' know about you but life is crazy; it's crazy good but crazy! You have a whirlwind week, husband's gone, started a new business in Real Estate, Sky is in a charter school now that is in a separate town, Britain and Luke are in the same school in our town and I have to be captainess of the ship for the entire week and not drop any balls doing it! By Friday I was spent and I planned on cleaning at least one room per day and have the whole downstairs done before our dinner party on Saturday. That's my pipe dream as well. The reality is by the time you work and pick up your kids, go food shopping, deal with small fires at the schools for whatever reason you get home and just drop all that's on you and sink into the chair or couch to breathe and know for the next 4 hours till the kids go to bed it will be homework, fighting, dinner to make, laundry to deal with, more fighting etc. etc. So my idea of cleaning a room per day was rediculous! I did get the dining room dealt with and more Halloween decorations up. That was good. So lets get back to Saturday, send hubby and girls out to shop for the week and tonights dinner. Luke is still with Brian's family and he's now attending Brian's soccer game and I am home looking at 2000 plus sq feet that needs a major dust, vacuum and washing of floors, as well as a bathroom to clean. So I go to the Tivo and pop in my favorite musician's DVD concert - Sting!! And get a groove on to cleaning this house!4 hours later I have all of it done minus Trevor's office and decided that is what doors were invented for! To close them and not deal!! Trevor and the girls are back and Luke is home now too and it's time to get cooking! Trevor and I decided we'd make our famous Chili! It's hot hot hot!! But good good good!! as a starter, then we'd tuck into homemade Fajitas!! Now this is all veggie Fajitas!! So good. Trevor thought we'd change our fajitas a bit by adding mexican rice!! So yummy! Our friends the Purcell's have 3 kids too, they are younger than our kids but it works out great because Sky is in babystitting mode and loves kids! Britain too. Sky and Britain took care of their youngest who is 18 months old. Beautiful Elena. Lucas is 4 and adorable. So they watched him too and Luke and Reiley are good friends a year apart and that is how we all met from the boys swim team. They were in the same age group. They get on wonderfully as well. Kristen brought a delicious salad with mixed greens, walnuts, craisins, pear slices and avocado! I've never tasted a salad like this before and it was gorgeous!! She also brought avocado dip with pita chips, and she also introduced us to our new found favorite cheese! It's taken several trips to wholefood to taste all the vegan cheese's we could find and decide we didnt' like any of them! But Kristen brought Galaxy Rice Shreds for us!! Trevor, the kids and I love it! Kristen also brought Vegan cookies and vegan cupcakes from wholefoods! I was so surprised and impressed with the thought and effort Kristen put into bringing not only what we'd talked about but she went above and beyond with vegan extras! Overall the dinner and company was wonderful!! Our lovely guests only said wonderful compliments toward choices of foods! Trevor and I feel very comfortable now to want to invite more friends over to serve our new found love of Vegan food!