Christmas Party Weekend

For the second year in a row, we had a Christmas Ugly Sweater Party for the parents Saturday night and a Gingerbread/Cookie Decoration Party for the kids Sunday afternoon.  It was a party weekend....and I am happy but exhausted.

Friday night, we had 10 couples come over to the house for the Ugly Christmas Sweater and White Elephant party.  The couples were either good friend or neighbors (new and old).  I looked forward to seeing the creativity of the sweaters knowing that some people had planned to make their own instead of buy them.  One guy wore his mother-in-law's vintage sweater vest which did not cover his stomach....eeeewwww.  Other guy wore a sweater with a very happy male unicorn.  I thought the best were the couple that took a picture of Chris, put a Santa hat on him and the posted mini-Chris' all over their shirts.  Everyone got a huge laugh out of this.

The White Elephant exchange was fun.  There was lots of stealing gifts especially for the popcorn, armadillo yard statue (neighborhood pet and long story) and elf house slippers.The couple that has little Chris pictures all over their shirts brought their shirts from last year that also had Chris on them. These shirts were eventually stolen by our neighbors down the street.  "Now we get to sleep with Chris if we want too".  Hilarious!

Waiting for Chris to explain the rules of the White Elephant gift exchange

Nikki, Doug, Chris, Robbie and me

Lucky new owners of the "Chris" shirt.

I made a selfie station so people could take funny pictures with the props.

Chris, Ashley, me and Chris

My BFF and Chris

Was I trying to eat the Naughty sign?

Everyone seemed to have a great time.  The party was over around 11pm but we we not tired.  We stayed up to watch a show and then went to bed because we had to get up the next morning to prepare for the next party.


The Gingerbread/Bounce House/Donation party started at 1pm Sunday so we were busy that morning cleaning up from the night before, and setting the tables and decorations out for the next party.  The donations were for the local children's hospital which is what we did last year.  We were expecting over 100 people to come to the house between 1pm and 4pm with close to 47 kids either bouncing or decorating.  The front and side of the house had the bounce houses and the backyard was set up with the decoration stations.

The bounce houses arrived around 8:30am so Collin and a few friends had to try them out.  His favorite was the obstacle course one.  The other one was smaller and meant for the little kids anyway.

Different from last year, a lot of the boys wanted to build a house or decorate a cookie. We had icing, crackers and candy everywhere.  As soon as the cookies were decorated, they were either eaten or used as part of the gingerbread house plans.  It was fun to see if the parent or the child would get into the decorating more.  Also, some kids went right into build the house while others sat there, looked at the other houses and planned what they were going to do.

In the backyard, making houses

One of the more elaborate houses

Maria and her boys showed up!

My house I built out of the leftovers and before cleaning up.
Yes, that's a frozen pool on one side and cars on the other.

Collin's house which I built under his design directions

There were bees flying around and enjoying the icing.  Some kids were scared and others were not especially when they saw that the bees just wanted the icing and were not there to bother them.  I had 3 on Collin's house at one time.

The parents that were not decorating where inside watching the football game or eating the snacks we had available.  The house and yard were full of people getting to know each other, catching up and having fun.  We loved it!

After everyone left and we cleaned up, Mimi, Leah and Timmy stayed to play with Collin and then have dinner at the house.  When Leah started to pick on Timmy, Mimi quickly thought it would be a good idea to watch a movie.  We found Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on TV.  The kids quickly and quietly sat and watched the movie.  I brought over a tin of popcorn someone brought to the house.  I think Timmy at the most.  Collin snugged up to me during the movie which I loved.  I was so comfy and exhausted that I fell asleep from probably 20 minutes.  I am sure it was also because Mimi gave me the best foot rub which relaxed me even more.