The Story

A few weekends back, my sister, brother in law, brother,  and I put on a big 5 star dinner for two very important people in our lives, our grandparents. Since my sister and I started working 6-7 years ago, we have always tried to do something big for our grandparents for Christmas. This is pretty difficult to do considering they really have about everything they could possibly want and if they don't it is out of our price range. However, we always manage to surprise them anyways. We have gotten them tickets to lots of different things, photo books, and various wines(they love wine.) This year we struggled to find the right gift. My sister and her husband ran into kind of a financial crisis right before Christmas and I was facing my own financial difficulties. It looked like it was going to be a year where they were going to get wine and coffee for Christmas, which I am sure they would have loved. My sister, however, came up with this brilliant idea of putting on a big meal for them with their own personal waiters, us cooking, romantic music, and a night about them. We would put off the expense for a month giving us both time to recoup from our difficult financial situations in December, but also giving them a wonderful gift. The idea wasn't a random one really, it was a memory from the past.
When my sister and I were young, we spent our summers together at our grandparents. We were pretty well known at the local attractions and my grandparents kept us very busy. They both worked during the day, but in the morning we would get up and go to some kind of class and in the afternoon my grandpa would pick us up, we would have lunch, and he would take us to one of the museums, the courthouse, the pool, the library, or whatever he had planned for the day and drop us off to wonder. Almost 10 years ago now, we took a cooking class and our grandparents encouraged us to be over zealous and express ourselves and so we did. That summer we made them dinner with some minor help in our chef hats and our aprons and they loved it. This dinner was a perfect opportunity to bring back a memory from the past and serve a little more sophisticated meal.
It was crazy how successful the night went. It was seamless and our grandparents were great about it. As my brother escorted the two of them two their seats, he told them Frank Sinatra was present tonight for a special live performance for just the two of them. My grandma laughed and said, "that is a special performance, all the way back from the grave." They asked where the bathrooms were(we did this in their own home) and allowed my brother and brother in law to escort them by candlelight. They even told us about their grandchildren. It was an amazing evening and definitely one we will be repeating. In the next few days I will be posting recipes and information on the set up so you can repeat the experience for someone special to you.