“I haven’t gone to bed at 6AM since college!” – Mike
The Christmas party was a resounding success once again. Lots of prep work takes over our lives the week before, but it pays off.
I even managed to stay relatively sober to witness the fruits of our labour!
We’re really liking the new house (is it new after 1.5 years?) for hosting Christmas parties. You have the kitchen/living room combo upstairs where the action is, the basement for the calmer party watching the hockey game and the garage to keep the beer cold. Coupled with some Christmas tunes playing in the background, a table full of amazing treats brought from everyone (thanks to everyone who brought treats. You are amazing.), and a leg lamp in the window.
Some of you readers may not have been to a Palmer/Cantin/Losier Christmas party so here’s the basic lay of the land:
7PM – Start time!
8PM – Trying to find room for everyone’s beer.
9PM – Trying to find room for everyone’s boots.
10PM – Christmas Trivia!
12AM – Ugly Sweater Winner – Steve and Isabelle took the prize this year! Well done!
12 – 1AM – Gift Exchange
Christmas trivia is a big hit. It consists of guys vs. girls trivia with the winning team taking home bragging rights and the trivia cup for the entire year. This year I think everyone can agree that the questions were a little too hard. In the end, out of 12 questions, I believe the guys got five right and the girls got one right. Krista made a good suggestion that for the harder questions, we should offer up multiple choice. I agree. It’s hard to gauge how hard to make the questions each year. Some may think that the questions should be easy…but with 25 people on each team, you have to think that there are 25 brains that may have a nugget of knowledge that will correctly answer the question. You have to make the questions hard. In the end, I am proud of the guys pulling through and answering five questions correctly!
Lately we have been coupling the question period with a few challenges. This year I must admit that I had a lot of fun creating the two of them.
Christmas Carol Snippet Trivia: Armed with a CD of 13 songs in 10 seconds snippets, I played the CD for everyone and the teams had to guess a) the Artist singing the song and b) the song name. One point for each correct answer with a total of 26 possible points. I had put some easy ones (Elvis – Blue Christmas) to obscure (Rob Thomas – A New York Christmas) and for the most part, ensured that at the very least, you could have an easy time identifying the artist or song title, but not the other. For example, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins has a very distinctive voice, but it’s hard to know that the song he sings is called ‘Christmastime’. In the end, the guys squeaked by with 17 possible answers compared to the ladies 15! Well done guys! Special thanks to Trish, Benoit and Aaron who were good sports about being omitted from the challenge since I took a bunch of carols from Trish’s Christmas compilation!
Angry Birds: Everyone was looking forward to some turkey bowling (as per last year) but alas, there was no snow in the driveway, and besides, I don’t like to bring back a challenge for sheer popularity…it’s our mission to make an even greater challenge! Earlier in the week someone at the lunch table at work stumbled upon a grand idea…create a real-life Angry Birds with a flying turkey! The wheels starting churning and Vero and Mike got together to figure out how we would make this happen.
Vero had a great idea that we could use the hammock stand as a launching structure for the slingshot. We then coupled a couple of tie-downs along with an inner tube for bike tire. Mike found an old washing detergent jug that we cut up so it could act as the part where you place the turkey inside. Let’s be honest, there were a few concessions we had to make from the get-go. One being that it would never hold a full-sized turkey. So we settled on a small chicken.
We started the slingshot off with a baseball and gave it a tug. Unfortunately it just didn’t have enough force and the ball would dribble out a few feet. I was not impressed. However we then realized that we just needed more elasticity so we tied a few bungee cords to the pail and that definitely gave the slingshot it’s much needed power! The baseball was definitely launching it a good ten feet, but still without some much needed force to take down an entire target.
We decided to call it a night and sleep on it. Something would trigger in our brains.
In the end, nothing really popped into our brains so we spent the next evening making the contraption quite solid and less prone to error. We didn’t want something shooting and taking someone’s eye out like Ralphie in the Christmas Story! I was warning people at the party that we made our challenge quite safe but we would need some safety goggles. I got some interesting looks when I said that!
We brought the slingshot into the backyard and set up some empty boxes about 10 feet away. It was hard to settle on a structure that we liked so we decided to leave that choice to the night of the party. We had some floodlights and track lighting in the backyard and away we went in testing it. A few tries had the ball sailing into the trees (which Mike had a fun time fishing out!) but then we connected with the boxes. BLAMMO! Good solid hit and we had big smiles on our faces. This was going to work.
In the end, I would like to think that everyone had a great time with the Angry Birds game. Each box that hit the ground was worth one point. In the end, the girls ended up with 32 points and the guys had something like 24 points. We had the choice of a baseball or a turkey fillet! Mern tried the turkey fillet and actually made it work to the cheers of the crowds! I’m also happy that we had the campfire going to keep the masses warm while they waited to play.
In a skewed move on my part, I had allowed the trivia cup to be won by the team who had the biggest cummulative score (trivia points + challenges). This was an oversight on my part because in the end, we awarded the cup to the ladies but really, the guys had kicked their asses in the majority of the entire trivia cup challenge from their sheer awesome brain power. Interestingly enough, the trivia cup actually went missing by the time of awarding the prizes and to this day, I still believe that divine intervention made the cup disappear as it knew that the scoring was flawed and the guys should have won. I’m sticking with that theory!
The rest of the night brought the gift exchange were there were tons of great gifts this year…heck, Andre even got a griddle! Vero and I walked out with some excellent wooden coasters (that mysteriously look like pork chops).
The party was still going strong for quite awhile and in the end, it was Mike and I left on the couch watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation with a beer in our hand. I knew it was time to go to bed when I heard snoring next to me and there was Mike with beer in hand fast asleep. The clock said 5:30 when I hit the sack and Mike said he managed to wake up, finish his beer and hit the hay around 6AM. Excellent party indeed!
Thanks to everyone who showed up to the party and helped out. We always appreciate seeing everyone before everyone hightails it out to their respective Christmas events, and it’s amazing how many people come together and help out in any way they can.
Notes for future:
– Ensure more multiple choice
– Ensure scoring doesn’t allow one challenge to win the entire game!
– Food turnout was great. Continue to ask a few select people to bring in larger items (jambalaya, wings, chili, etc.)
– Apple cider was a big hit this year. Didn’t get around to Gluhwein. If we need to make it, do it before the trivia challenge.
– Stereo upstairs worked great. Used small speakers.
– Need to decorate a little downstairs.
– Campfire was great but unsure if it will work in the future if there is snow.
– Don’t forget to tell people there are lawn chairs! Had forgotten some that were set out near the garden so no one knew of them.
– Don’t forget the eggnog for Duncan in the fridge next year!
UPDATE:
Totally forgot the best part of the Christmas party. Rachel brought out the saxaphone during Angry Birds and played some Careless Whisper. Inspiration from this comes from this amazing video: