The guests that never leave

When we first got married and we had company on Shabbos, I'd set the lights to go off around 3 PM and that was the sign that we had to bench and that the guests had to go home. It's not that I didn't like having guests but I just didn't want them to stay forever. One time about 8 years ago in St. Louis we had company on Friday night and we benched and then they were supposed to go home. The only problem was that they were good friends of ours and instead sat down in the living room to shmooze. I thought that was really nice and everything except that I was really tired and I just wanted to go to sleep. So I said that I had to put the kid(s) to sleep. I went and got my blanket and pillow and climbed into bed with Rivka and "accidentally" fell asleep when I was putting her to sleep. I'm not sure how long the guests stayed but I got in a lot of trouble from Shira later.

I must have mellowed a lot in my old age. I actually don't mind when guests stay for a long time and when we go places we tend to stay a really long time. We try not to overstay our welcome but I think that we might stay too long sometimes. We ate lunch yesterday at the Turks' house with the Davids and the Baumans and we benched around 3 PM. Our kids were having a great time. Rivka went home to read, Zvi went to a park to play with friends, Leora went to Bauman's house and Yeshaya was playing upstairs at the Turks. So Shira and I just sat down in the living room and shmoozed. We ended up staying until about 5 PM! So I've changed from the guy who was always the first one out after every meal to the guest that doesn't leave. It must be Shira's fault.