Ornaments, finger food, and friends

On the 22nd we had our first annual Christmas party and ornament exchange. It was hosted by Danielle and Andrew, whose new house looked suuuuper cute decorated for Christmas! They had a real tree and it looked so great next to their fireplace with all our gifts on it. Danielle had really cute Christmas-y plates to put our food on that we brought. We were supposed to bring a finger food, so I brought a finger-dessert: cake balls! I had such a busy day trying to see friends at Casa Grande and return wedding gifts at Short Pump, but I made the cake balls happen! It was tough, but Nicole came to help me do the last part, which took the longest. It was great to get to see her and spend more time with her before she heads off to Australia for a year!

It was so fun to see all our friends and get to hang out. I LOVE all those people!! It is the best time when we get together - everyone knows each other so well and we are all crazy, so it makes for a fun time. I know there were some great quotes from the night but I can't remember them (let's not forget the lunch quote - can I change mine to beans??). We were mostly divided into girls and guys after the game so it was fun to get some girl chatting time in - we talked about weddings a lot because there are so many that just happened and are coming up! (And Jamie and Kevin are engaged now!!! Yaaaay congratulations to them!!)

Danielle had the great idea to do an ornament-themed white elephant gift exchange, which was great because we all got stuff we can use, even if it was weird. Jamie and I decided we're going to make this a tradition, have it at a different house every year, and get a small tree to put all our ornaments on that we get from the party. There were sooooo many weird ones!! Actually I think they were pretty much all weird. Here are some highlights: sock animals, sparkly ones (including giant lips), feathery birds, a hula cow, a couple homemade ornaments, and a bag of pipecleaners to make your own ornament. The guys used the pipe cleaners to make penguins for the girls.

We had so much fun and can't wait for next year!