Lee and I used to love entertaining company, but most of our entertaining over the last two years has been aimed at a certain little girl named Camille. We’re very grateful for that, although she is more impressed by paper plates with fun patterns than by our wedding china.

And although we’ve had people over for dinner since her arrival, they’ve been family or close friends we didn’t have work so hard to impress. Or they’ve been friends with their own toddlers and were just happy for a hot dog they didn’t have to cook themselves.

But we finally dove back into the world of entertaining last night, and I’m happy to report that we can still pull it off. A couple had us over to their house a few weeks before Camille’s birth, and we’d yet to return the favor. We figured two years was long enough, so we had them over last night.

We washed the dust off the china, got out the chargers, the linen napkins and rings, filled a crystal pitcher with water and fresh cut limes, opened a bottle wine, and even remembered to put out appetizers. Camille was a JEWEL and behaved like quite a lady – although I’m glad we made the choice to eat our adult meal after she went to bed.

We really enjoyed it, although I don’t need to do it again any time soon – there are still too many pieces of crystal in our sink waiting to be hand-washed. But the food was good, the company was even better, and it was nice to know we can still host a decent dinner party!