2008 Annual Christmas Party

(more pictures to come I’m sure…)

Vero and I awoke quite late on Saturday morning after her party and cleaned up the place.  I knew we would be sluggish during the day so I phoned Mike to let him know that we would showing up quite late to the house for preparing for the Christmas party.  He was in the process of cleaning up the place, God bless his partying soul.

We headed towards Quebec to pick up some beer.  You know, picking up beer over there is a wild card experience as they have rotating sales so you can’t get a fixed sale price on certain beer.  Case in point, Rob wanted us to pick up some Coors Light for him thinking it would be $20 a case but in the end with tax and deposit and no real sale, it came out to $33 a case.  Is it cheaper than Ontario?  Sure, by a few bucks.  But you have to look out for the deals like how Blue Light was on sale for $20.

We also picked up 90% of the items needed for the night and trekked out to Orleans.  It was around 4PM when we rolled into the house and the house was looking fantastic.  The Christmas cheer was in the air as we set up the liquor table, wrapped some gifts and watched A Christmas Story.  Mike and I then headed to the liquor store and Wal-Mart to print of some pictures.  I had acquired a bulletin board awhile back which I left in my bathroom.  On it are pictures for different events.  For example, Vero’s birthday party has adorned it for the past few months.  I decided to print off a bunch of pictures from yesteryear and put it onto this bulletin board for everyone to peruse.  Maybe by next year’s fifth annual party, I’ll have gathered up everyone’s photos to make a slide show.

When we returned, we had a little something to eat and around 8PM people started trickling in.  I believe James and Ferda were the first to arrive and Mark and Carleigh were close behind them.  Keeping in mind that Carleigh took a tumble down the stairs last year, we had put caution tape up on the doorway to the basement as well as threw up a mattress at the bottom of the stairs just in case.  She had a good laugh at that.

Within the next hour the party exploded with a number of people showing up with gifts for the exchange, treats to munch on and all-around good Christmas spirit.  Vero had taken some nice hors d’oeuvres from the oven and was passing them out to the masses.

When Mike and Mel came into the party, they had this HUGE box with them and they passed it to me.  I proceeded to open it up and found the most unlikely of gifts, but the most likely to be the coolest gift ever received…a Jason Voorhees (of Friday the 13th fame) statue!  I was flabbergasted.  I didn’t know what to say.  Turns out that back in the summer, there was an auction to support a family who’s daughter was sick and they saw it and figured I would enjoy it.  They figured right!  It was amazing!  I had a good laugh at Mike’s tale of how I showed up at the auction and he thought “Oh no, how am I going to hide this?!” and he had to scoot out to the car.  Thank you very much Mike and Mel for this beautiful gift.  He was a great addition to the food table as he held up the candy canes with his machete.  I think I showed every at the party the new addition to our family.  This statue is huge!

The night became a whirlwind of people entering the house and drinks being poured.  Christmas music was blaring, ugly sweaters abound, all was good in the house.

Around 11PM people were getting antsy to get the main events going so we started up the trivia challenge.  It took awhile to get everyone quieted down as there was the biggest turnout yet at the party.  With Mike’s friends, Vero’s friends, the addition of my own work friends…I would say there were close to sixty people in this place.  At one point it was hard to navigate from room to room!  With everyone quieted down I talked about how nice it was to have everyone under one roof before everyone went their separate ways for the holidays.  As a man who doesn’t have a whole lot of family around the Ottawa area, it’s nice to see my ‘other’ family get together for a little celebration.

The trivia challenge started with the taking back of the trophy from the women.  Let me say that the trivia challenge was quite crazy at one point and there were a few times were Vero and I were starting to feel bad.  We really thought that a few people were slighted (including one of Mike’s friends who exited the game after I asked him to hand in his iPhone!).  It is good to know that afterward, many people have told me that it was all in good fun and each team is there to have fun and yell at each other.  I had forgotten about this aspect of the game and had started to take it personally.  Clearly I am a fool and next year, I won’t let it bother me as much!  Let the cheating allegations continue!

Vero had a great idea of introducing challenges into the trivia questions so every few questions we interrupted the question period to introduce a team challenge.
Human Wrapping – Each time received a roll of scotch tape and a roll of wrapping paper and had to wrap up one person of the team.  At one point they started adding various items from the room onto the wrapped bodies (beer bottles, C3PO heads) so I gave the teams a few extra moments to add whatever they wanted to make the gift look amazing.  In the end Vero and I chose the men as the winning team.  I personally enjoyed their touch of beer bottles and the C3PO head, as well as a male member sticking outside the wrapping paper.  Vero didn’t really care for the robot head but she agreed it was a decent wrapping job.  I appreciated the women taping a picture of Vero and I onto their own wrapped human though.  That almost won the challenge for them!
Untangling the Buhr Christmas Lights – Rob had a bunch of Christmas lights that we tied in knots (ala the Griswold lights) and each team had to untangle them.  Men were victorious once again!  Rob was wondering if the teams could get bonus points if we helped him hang them up at his house!
Eggnog Chugging – After the trivia questions were done, the women were trailing by two points.  We decided that there would be one final challenge and it would be worth three points which would allow the women the chance to win the trophy for two years in a row.  Eggnog Chugging!  Each team is given a quart of eggnog and by any means they wish, they must drink it.  We moved this challenge to the garage not knowing what it would amount to.  I believe there may be some video footage of it as well.  Mike’s friend Andre took up the starting position with a few backups behind him and Duncan’s girlfriend Kristen took up the women’s starting position with a few backups.  The race was on and they were drinking it like there was no tomorrow!  The moments ticked by and we all wondered who would emerge victorious.  At one point Kristen needed to pass it off (a valiant effort by her) but the men’s team kept going and lo and behold, Andre drank the entire thing by himself and secured the men’s victory for 2008!  It was a glorious moment (however both Andre and Kristen were found in a coma-like state shortly afterward!) and we made sure the women knew about it.  😉  We had some good pictures of the men taken as well as remembering to get a group shot of everyone at the party as I had forgotten to get one the year before.

The gift exchange went by swimmingly with Matt and Vero handling the details.  I must admit I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to it as Krista and Ben had made an appearance and there were others that were not taking part so I felt the need to play the host and chat with them.  This wasn’t a bad thing considering I pulled out the bottle of Scotch for Steve and I.

The night ended with us saying goodbye to many a friend, and Vero realized she hadn’t given out her door prizes so she gave them to all the people leaving the party at the end.  I opened up Trish’s gift to me which was a killer gift…she had cross-stitched Legend of Zelda video game characters and framed it!  What a unique and awesome gift!  I think I shall bring it to work.  A few stragglers were spending the night and I had hit the wall of needing slumber so I retired to bed for the night.

We have had quite the few rave reviews about this year’s Christmas party.  It was probably the best yet and I can only say that it’s because we have the best friends showing up to these things and bringing forth the holiday cheer.  I don’t even know how we’ll top this year’s party next year.  It’s always nice to throw in a few new things, but it’s hard to think of ideas! We’re glad everyone had a grand old time and can’t wait for next year!  Remember, second Saturday in December!

If anyone can get some pictures to me, that would be swell.  I didn’t take any.

Highlights of the night:
– At one point, I got a phone call from another Vero.  Thinking it was Vero’s friend Vero (whaaa?), I explained the directions to the house (which was surprisingly hard as I had forgotten the street names to my place!) and I went to the bottom of the driveway to meet her.  At the same time, Mike, Vince, Vero and Naomi showed up and I said “Wow, what good timing on your part as I’m waiting for my other friend!”.  They parked, I helped them inside and then I headed back out when I saw Dave and Stephen pull up.  I said I was the valet service for the night!  I thought it was really strange that Vero had not shown up yet as she had just called from turning onto my street and she was nowhere to be seen in at least five minutes.  Then I clued in that all this time, I was talking to Vero from the first car that showed up!  I couldn’t believe I had been waiting for some non-existant person to show up!
– Vince and company from my work showed up in great sweater style and he ended up taking the prize for ugliest sweater of the night!  He walked away with Trish’s new Christmas album “I’ll Be Having a Blues Christmas” which had a hilarious photoshoot a month ago.  Vince was not impressed that there was no actual CD in the case but I managed to snag it from the stereo before he left.
– Asking Mike (from work) to mix me a drink and when I got it I had no qualms about saying how weak it was.  “Buddy, could you have put any more mix into this drink?”.  We all had a good laugh.
– Men winning the trivia challenge (once again!  Victory!)

Notes for Next Year (these came in quite handy while planning this years):
– It was a good idea to buy some hot appetizers (aka sausage rolls, little random pastries).  They were gobbled up and are a good foil to the sweets which are brought.  Perhaps if we are ambitious next year we can make some chili for people?
– Always remember the group picture.
– One jug of cider is clearly enough.  We bought four quarts of eggnog and two were used in the competition and two were left over.  However, I don’t think anyone knew there was eggnog in the house so that’s our own fault for not advertising it.
– The rye took a bit hit at the party next year.  A 40 oz was enough for the night.
– Gift exchange with non-alcohol related gifts is still a good idea.  Sure, a few sneak in, but at least it’s not all alcohol based!  Best gift of the night was by far the Playmates over the Years book.  That was slick.  Was that Matt who brought that?
– Challenges seemed to be a very welcome addition to the trivia challenge.  It was a good laugh and got people moving.  Eggnog didn’t become a mess at all.  Think of new ones to add next year.
– Go easy on the people with the iPhones.  It was very nice of Karilee and Matt to allow the confiscation of theirs, but at the same time, it’s pretty hard to find an answer to something in the time the hourglass falls anyhow!  They were good sports though.
– Maybe find a few other Christmas movies next year.  The He-Man christmas special was on TV and it was a great laugh.
– I hope future-self is in good health again this year.  Dang, you look good!  Signed: Past-self.