With the weather getting cooler and the nights coming earlier, it is the perfect time of year for cozy get togethers with friends.

I have a group of friends who love to meet up together to share a meal, laugh and play games. Several of us have been friends for years, decades even.

And other of us (me included) have joined the group more recently.

Nate and I recently hosted everybody over at our house for Game Night. Due to time constraints, we made it “potluck snacks”.

Our contribution was fresh-popped homemade parmesan popcorn and Mountain Dew Throwbacks (made with actual sugar and orange juice, yum).

Others brought leftover Halloween candy, brownies, a growler of locally brewed beer from Carolina Brewery, guacamole and jalapeno chips.

I tried to sneak in a few photos under the radar as we played our group favorite, Catch Phrase. I always struggle a little bit inside my head when it comes to photographing my friends. Especially during intimate gatherings. On the one hand, I don’t want to make people feel self conscious or get the deer-in-the-headlights OMG someone is photographing me freeze-up. And yet, I love that we have these photos to document our time together. It’s a tough balance.

Eventually we decided to get wild with our gaming choices and we switched to Trivial Pursuit for a few rounds.

Doesn’t Trivial Pursuit feels like it takes forever to play. Maybe that’s just me, which is why the box tends to get a bit dusty between uses. We were all getting sleepy so we decided to change the rules and make every question a pie question in the interest of getting home at a semi-reasonable hour.