This year, Jason's daughter Cheyenne organized the Ikea formal dinner party.

The affair began at 6pm at the West Sacramento IKEA's cafeteria. They served meatballs.

They used to sell meatballs in groups of 10, 15 or 20, but now they sell a "plate of meatballs" and tempt you to "add 5 meatballs for $1!" which is strange, because they don't explain how many meatballs you start with on the plate in the first place.

It's like "Do you want X meatballs or X+5 meatballs?" And no, you can't solve for X because the $1/5 meatballs is marketed as a better rate than the original X meatballs for $4.99.

I mean, I hope it is a better rate, because if the $1/5 rate holds up for the $4.99, that's 25 meatballs, and if I could possibly eat 25 meatballs, why the hell would I want 5 more at any price?!

I got chicken strips and a shotglass of Pepsi.

After dinner, we broke up into groups for fun and games.

Most of the adults settled down for a few rounds of Boggle in a living room. I had to drag a couple of chairs out of a "living in 548 sq. ft." kitchen, but everyone ended up with a good view of the letters.

A photo of the gaming action.

Not the best photo of me, but I had to include it because of the image reflected in the dark, fake tv screen to my left.

GHOST BABY!

By the way, is there an iphone app for optimum boggle score?

The Ikea staff did not approach us at all. Believe it or not, we tried to avoid rendering the displays useless, and invited this young couple to join us.

They liked the couch, even as Diana tried to steer them toward kid-friendly upholstery.

Some of the younger guests made themselves at home in the lounge chair area.

Jason on the Jesper Chair.

Just when I stretching my legs in Boggle (Bunter, Hunter), we noticed the time and moved to a long white table on display near the kids section.

Here we shook up the tiles for a quick game of bananagrams.

I don't think I'm that good at bananagrams.

At 8 p.m., Ikea closed. Although none of us were really ready to leave, we picked up our things and headed towards the exit.

Finding the exit was easy, we just went left, then right, straight, then left, then through a shortcut, right, right, downstairs, then right, right, past the Google Streetview trailer, left, right, right, through the tunnel, right and then two quick lefts and a long walk through the warehouse to the cash registers.

It was a success! Tragically, I did not win a game of boggle, bananagrams or anything else, but we did have a wonderful time at our Swedish friend's impeccable, if over-furnished home.

Next time I'll try to convince everyone to play a game I'm really good at.

Hide and seek.