Friday Night Party - by Bethany

I don't have many memories from first grade, but one sticks out to me. It was a Friday in the fall, and I was so excited for school to be over. "Why?" asked my teacher, Dr. Mayfield. "On Friday nights, we eat junk food and pizza and lay all over the floor all evening watching movies until we're so tired our dad drags us to bed in our clothes!" (Or something to that effect.) The teacher mentioned it to my mom. She was mortified!

Okay, I don't have a picture of our Friday night parties, but here's a blast from the past to get you in the right frame of reference. (Whitney, Haley, Bethany, Ashley)

When we were growing up, Friday night was not a time to go hang out with friends. My dad wanted to do whatever he could to keep us home together as a family as much as possible, hence the mantra "Flakes don't do friends". To make us actually want to stay home with each other, my parents started the tradition of the Friday Night Party. 

Every Friday night for as long as I can remember, I came home from school to the smell of baking. Brownies, blondies, bird nest cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and no bakes were some of the regulars. Friday also happened to be shopping day, so there were all kinds of new goodies to discover: snack cakes and pies from the Hostess discount store, black-and-white bags of generic chips or cheese popcorn, cheapo Big K pop, and of course, either Fox DeLuxe (aka "cardboard") pizza or pepperoni rolls. It was like Christmas every weekend!

Dad would go to the library and rent a big stack of old movies - musicals, black and white, war movies, classics, live action Disney, etc. We would all go to the family room, vote on which movie we'd watch first, and fill our plates with piles of food set up on the big folding table. Then we'd eat and eat all night while watching movie after movie, sitting and laying all over the room. I'm sure my mom is mortified that I'm sharing this with the world, but to me it is a very fond memory!

When I told my husband about this tradition a few years into our marriage, he LOVED the idea. We don't go quite as overboard as the original version, but we and our kids always look forward to Friday nights at home with the family.

We always have a pizza. Our current favorite is pepperoni and green peppers, with a delicious (and cheap) pre-made herb pizza dough from Safeway. (I'm afraid I've had failure after failure with many different homemade dough recipes.)

We asked for a pizza peel one Christmas since we make pizza so much.

You may call that burnt, but it's EXACTLY how I like it, super crispy, and every bite gets eaten!

My spread doesn't come anywhere close to my mom's, but it all gets eaten. 

Pizza, cucumbers, diet root beer, and usually some kind of treat.

(Note bottles with lids to prevent messes, and paper plates! No dishes!)

The movie portion of our Friday night party is always evolving. When our oldest was younger, we watched a cartoon every week. Now we've moved on to live action family movies, with cartoons thrown in every once in a while. Admittedly, some of these shows are painful for adults to watch, but the kids love them! I get movies from the library, or we just watch something on Netflix.

We hook our laptop to the TV for Netflix movies. The kids love getting to eat in front of the TV.

It's a sacrifice to sit through episodes of "Caspar's Scare School", but it's for the kids.

It's a very simple concept that I think a lot of people practice with slight variations. We like it so much that if something happens on Friday night to prevent our regular plan, we'll do it the next night we can. When we have to throw it into a weeknight and go to bed early, sometimes we just watch an episode of something. It's worth it to us, and not just because it's fun and delicious. It's tradition and family bonding, and something that I hope will keep our kids wanting to spend most Friday nights with the family well into their teens.

You can't beat those happy smiling faces!

"More pizza crust, please!"