New Christmas Tradition??

This year, most of my friends and family have had a tough time financially. Between divorces, new business start-ups, pay cuts, new home purchases, etc. taking the time and money to go out and purchase Christmas gifts for each other was a little tough to think about. So one of my friends (either Scott or Doug, not sure which) came up with the idea that among our group of 7 friends and neighbors, we would instead all get together, go out and have a fabulous meal at a nice restaurant and that would be our gift to ourselves and each other.

The restaurant chosen was The Hil at Serenbe. Serenbe is a new (way swanky) community about 35 miles south of Atlanta. It has sort of a Stepford Wives feel to it. But in a good kind of way. If that makes sense.

The road down to Serenbe is completely dark and foreboding. And it was raining. So of course, we would end up making a wrong turn and find ourselves on a creepy road, complete with a small, dark church, which only freaked us out a little more. (Shades of Peters Road and Devil's Church from my teenage years.) Doug kept talking about how if this was a B-Movie, that the audience would at this point be shouting "Turn around, turn around." So, as would happen, almost the minute those words were out of his mouth, we suddenly hit the end of the paved road and found ourselves bumping along on a dirt road in the woods, all frantically searching for one of three cell phones in the car that hopefully still had a signal. (I won - yeah Cingular/AT&T).

Fortunately, we all made it out alive and dinner was awesome. My steak was done to perfection, the dessert fabulous, heck, I even partook of wine and cocktails - something that I rarely do. (Thank God for Photoshop - I was able to tone down the red in my nose in this shot of Todd and myself.)

Yes, a wine glass was broken by someone in an overly enthusiastic toast, but really, with this group it isn't actually a good party until someone breaks something. And while I'll not say who broke the glass, I will provide a hint.

Our total bill was over $400, which I think may have been a record for the group. But, it was still cheaper than trying to find 6 gifts for a group of people with exceptionally good (and expensive) taste. Plus I still have leftovers, so tonight's dinner was covered.

Anyway, here is the group following dinner (minus Scott, who took the picture, but is pictured above, giggling with Doug.) It was raining and we were outside in the dark, so the quality sort of sucks. Someone may have had too much to drink - can you guess who?

If you guessed all of us, you would probably be correct.