How Far I’ll Go

By Ali Rouse Royster, 3rd Generation

PHOTO BY NIKI NORTON PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve always loved a theme. Even back in college, I was always throwing theme parties. So nowadays, we’ve been trying to inject different little activities into our routine during stay-at-home and saferat-home and I’m-not-sure-what-phasewe’re-in-but-I’m-still-mostly-stayinghome. Now my family has theme nights, mostly food related — say, for instance, it’s Italian night: Let’s cook spaghetti and watch Lady and the Tramp. We recently made sushi on our own for the first time, and while it looked like a disaster — our rolling skills need some help — it tasted great, and my oldest child loved it. My next theme is going to be bigger in scale: I’m going to do a full-on luau. Well, maybe not burying-a-pig-in-the-backyard fullon, but more than just themed food! In an effort to add some variety to the shows my kids were watching on repeat (I mean, I love both Frozen and Trolls, and their soundtracks, but it was time for a change!), I introduced my little girl to Moana, and she and my youngest both took to it. Unsurprisingly, Moana’s is now the soundtrack on repeat in my house. I don’t hate it! But check back with me in a few weeks…. And now that the heat has descended and it really feels like boiling hot summer, voila! Our backyard luau is in the works.

My plan — subject to change at any time, of course — is to decorate very minimally with tiki torches, if we can find them, and I’ll break out some leis I found in a box of costumes, let the kids dress however they want (I have a feeling the Moana costume we borrowed from my sister’s girls will make an appearance), play a Polynesian playlist of tunes I found on Spotify and, of course, eat. At the ‘Ohana restaurant at Disney, they do coconut races, using brooms to sweep coconuts across the floor, and hula dancing. (Thank you, YouTube, for helping a mama out — though I may resort to just bringing out some hula hoops as a luau activity.) For food, I’ll probably keep it to things my kids might actually eat, but if they don’t, I’ll have peanut butter sandwiches on standby as always. I found a great-looking recipe for pineapple shrimp fried rice (you can even serve it in the hollowed-out pineapple!), and we’ve done a couple of versions of yakisoba noodles lately, so that could work too. These honeycoriander chicken wings look delicious, or we can always do a delicious pulled pork outside on our Big Green Egg, which would surely taste as good as anything we’d bury in the yard.

In early 2020, before we knew what this year had in store for us, I told some of my friends that this was my year to embrace being as blatantly “extra” as I wanted to be. I made this proclamation at a Valentine’s Day pizza party I hosted for about 15 adults and 25 kids, where I set up kids’ tables with pizza parlor style red gingham tablecloths and faux candles, and popped prosecco for the adults. (See? Extra.) I probably would have tried to make this a backyard luau blowout if this were any other year — but here we are, waist-deep into 2020, wondering what curveball is coming next! And so instead of sitting home and wallowing about what I should be doing, I’ve decided to sit home and still have as much fun as we can, even if it’s on a smaller scale. If you see tiki torches burning in my backyard and hear the strumming of a ukulele, don’t worry! We haven’t gone mad, we’re just having a luau — and being a little extra — at home.