Adult Christmas Party - Floyd Church (12.14.08)

Last night, for me, signified the start of the Christmas fun season (unless you consider gift buying fun). We had our annual Christmas party at church. It's an adult only party (not because it's dirty in anyway) which for the first time in my memory we had on Sunday night. My mother, sister, and I all attended from our family. Here's what typically happens...

Christmas candy preparation - The first event of the party is the annual Christmas candy preparation. This is typically a bunch of different candies and/or sweets that are bagged (or boxed) up for presentation to church attendees the Sunday before Christmas. A couple of people decided to get a head start and start the bagging early. By the time I arrived around 6pm, everyone was well underway in prepping the bags (photo 1).

Food - Anytime you get church members together with food, it's always a treat. And what Christmas party is complete without food. Photo 2 doesn't do the amount of food available justice. Despite the fact that we had nearly 60 people attend (a record?), there was plenty for me to have 2 helpings of food. My favorite was an apple dumpling bean soup prepared by Don (photo 3).

Chinese gift auction - Here's the rules: Everyone brings a gift to exchange (around $5 - though some were clearly more than that) (see photo 4). Everyone is given a number that determines the order you go up to get a gift. Some people had creative uses for those numbered sheets (photo 3). When it's time to go up, you either get a gift from the group in the center (photo 4) or grab one from someone else. The "victim" then has to go up to the center to grab a new gift or grab something from another person. They can not go and grab the gift they just lost.

This year's group (photo 5 panoramic) was large and got almost downright vicious at times. Spouses were working together to get back gifts recently lost (because if one person gets any gift twice, it was theirs).

An admission on my part: The gift I had gotten wasn't even touched by the time I got up there (#46). So I decided to target my gift making believe it wasn't mine (it was that little blue package left and down from center in photo 4). I decided to gamble that if I had that gift out in the open, then someone could make a play for it. The remaining people didn't even think of going for it, so guess what I ended up with. I was needing a new travel alarm clock anyway.

Let's see what happens next year. I may have to get more devious.