Samantha's first blog

Posted By pamelamyers on January 25, 2017

Last night we hosted a dinner party for a bunch of Mark’s colleagues who were here from overseas for a workshop at his job. Mark wanted to have everyone over as a goodwill gesture because so many of his colleagues have hosted him while he was in Germany. It turned out to be a ton of people! Everyone accepted his invitation and it turned out to be about 17 people. I took the day off from work to make sure the house was ready for everyone and it looked sufficiently festive. The previous weekend, Mark and I strung lights all over the house and it did make the atmosphere very nice. Sam was thrilled, of course! She was super excited about the party and kept talking about it for weeks. I am not sure what made her so excited: (a) the fact that we were having a party, (b) that it was a “grown-up” party and she was allowed to attend, (c) that she was allowed to stay up late, (d) that I gave her a homework pass for that evening, or (e) all of the above!

When it got close to party time, Sam got dressed in her elegant black party dress (the lack of shoes or socks paired with the fancy dress sort of just screams “Sam,” doesn’t it?) You can see a bunch of Mark and Sam’s electronics experiments set up in front of the television. Mark thought everyone would all get a kick out of seeing them since they are all sort of tech-y, computer people. He was right!

She was so impatient waiting for everyone to arrive but she hung in there. She only asked me every 2 minutes for a hour when everyone was coming…

But come they did! Here is the whole group. We had people from various parts of Germany, Belarus, Bulgaria, Israel, Canada, Spain, and Ireland. It was quite an interesting group. There were a lot of different languages being spoken in small groups throughout the evening and I think Sam found it fascinating.

Everyone seemed to have a great time. There was a lot of good conversation, and everyone enjoyed the food. We had a Philadelphia themed party with a ton of hoagies, cheesesteaks, cannoli, soft pretzels, and other regional food. Everyone couldn’t get enough of the cheesesteaks! Can you blame them? Sam had fun showing Johanna, who teaches Scratch, some of the programs she had been working on with the M-Bot. It  was racing all around the house with its cup of Hershey bars for everyone. It made for a fun night.

Sam grabbed her Kindle at one point to show everyone other programs she had written in Scratch. They were all pretty impressed with her, actually. I don’t think they were just being nice. For a seven year old to be able to do any programming at all is pretty cool.

Mark’s boss thought it was so cute how she was right up there on the chair “teaching” everyone about Scratch. He said, “Look at that, the future of SAP! Maybe she’ll be our next CEO.” Hey, who knows?

After everyone left, we stopped for a minute to look at all the amazing things that people brought her. It was insane! Sam said to me at one point that evening, “It’s like my birthday!” Yeah, it really was. Mark said that everyone kept asking him if they could bring anything and he told them, no, they didn’t need to, but if they wanted to, since Sam is really excited about meeting people from all over the world, to maybe bring her a little something from their country, like a sticker!  This is way past stickers, people. Everyone was so ridiculously generous with our daughter, and us too, bringing wine and other beautiful gifts. It was a really great evening, but a lot of work. I think I’m done entertaining for a while!

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