Wow, I really cannot believe 2010 is here already. So much has happened in this past decade. Sometimes it feels as if time passes too quickly, and other times it feels as if events from a few years ago happened in another life-time.
But I’m not here to wax philosophical. I’m here to talk about the holidays of 2009. Funny how the idea of hosting a Christmas party popped up out of nowhere while driving in the car: “Hey, we should have a Christmas Party this year and invite our closest friends.” Christy said “ok” and my part of the planning was done. Haha. Gotta love it…
I have to admit she did a great job making everything look festive. When Friday rolled around (The 18th) I found it difficult to get much work done, so I didn’t really try after about noon. Instead I helped clean up and put the decorations up.
Hanging the garland that framed the entrance to the dining room was particularly interesting since halfway through, we found that this thing was at least 500 feet long, and we could wrap it around the house a few times if we wanted.
But creative ingenuity won the day and I promptly took the remaining 485 feet and wadded it into a large Christmasy ball and tossed it behind the cat litter box so no one knew the difference. Ahhhh… Tiss the season to be deceptive…
Unfortunately at the last minute a few friends we were hoping could make it had to call and cancel, so to be honest, I was expecting the worst since it had begun to snow, and many were driving quite a ways. But around 30 – 45 minutes before people started showing up I walked down the stairs to see how beautiful everything looked with the dining room table softly lit and packed full of snacks, drinks, candy and even party poppers for the guests.
It was perfect. Even if every last guest cancelled, we could still enjoy the evening with a table full of holiday cheer. Around 6:00 – 6:15 guests began to trickle in. Brad, Amber, Bob, Matt, Dad, Janice and her son, Rob and Sherri, Matt and Caitlin, a few others.
It was starting to look like a lot of fun, but I had to cut out early and run upstairs to host a Pre-Training phone call for around 30 – 40 small business owners since I had stupidly scheduled this call a week ago. Bob and Rob followed me upstairs to listen in.
It turned out to be a great call, and Rob absolutely loved the information. After this call was over with a headed back downstairs to begin grilling hotdogs and burgers. It was cold and snowy outside, but who cares right? When people are hungry, people are hungry! I’ll admit to feeling a bit cave-manish running outside every 2 minutes in the snow to manipulate dead animal on the grill… But Rob, Matt, Bob and the other Matt came outside to help so that helped.
The food was good, the party poppers were fun, and we played plenty of Pictionary Man for hours after most people left. Bob, Matt, Caitlin and the other Matt stuck around for more games. At this point Caitlin was out like a lightbulb though. But we still had plenty of great chats, and everyone had a great time.
Bob and Matt stayed the night since it was around 1:30 a.m. at this point. Overall a great evening and yet another holiday memory. Things get stressful in a hurry these days, so you can never have too many pleasant memories to bring with you.
