Christmas Parties!

i love this time of year. i love buying presents for other people. i love wrapping them up. i love seeing christmas lights strung up on people's houses (and particularly on their cacti on their lawn. i love living in the desert!)i love it all. and i really love christmas shindigs. we've already been to three, and we have four more to go! we went to our small group's party on tuesday, and we also went to the high school volunteers' party a few weeks ago. and we went to chris' work party on sunday. (that was for the guys on his squad.) here are a few of my favorite moments from those parties:

-at the high school volunteers' party:
one of the white elephant gifts was two mostly-eaten boxes of chocolates accompanied with pictures of the giver of the gift eating the chocolates. there was also a note that said: "Your real gift is dinner with the Suiters!" creative. and awesome. chris stole that present and we are looking forward to hanging with the suiters in the new year!

-at our small group party:
-one of the white elephant gifts was a giant bag of peanut m&ms and a note that said 'dinner with chris and jihae!' that seems like such a lame thing for chris and i to do, right? to steal someone else's idea for a gift? except that wasn't one of the gifts that chris and i brought to the party. robert and lindsay put that gift in the pile, unbeknownst to us. pretty much the funniest thing i have seen in a long time, so i can't even be mad that i am being 'forced' to make dinner for another couple. (which we are really looking forward to hanging out with john and betsy!)
-there were lots of lame presents at our white elephant this year. and juan was really trying to 'sell' his gift to anyone who had a turn coming up. he had opened a bag that had a super festive-themed sugar bowl and creamer set. i could only see it froma distance but i think i saw snowmen, santa, and possibly even a menorrah. perfect for a young bachelor like himself... when it was jenny's turn to pick a gift, juan really turned on his sales pitch for the set. jenny looked him straight in the eye and said: "why would i want that? it came from my house!" you had to be there. it was so amazing.

-at chris' work party:
-there are six guys on chris' squad, and all those guys and their families were there, with kids ranging from 12 years old to 2 months old. the kids were all really good about playing together and eating together, and all that. then they started to do that game that, i would love to say only kids play, but unfortunately adults do it too, and it's the "yeah, well i am better/richer/cooler than you" game. the 'game' gets started:
kid 1: "Yeah, well i have an xbox and a playstation..."
kid 2: "Yeah? well i have an xbox, a playstation, and a DS..."
kid 1: "Yeah? my dad has a rifle." (way to change it up!)
kid 2: "Yeah? my dad has a rifle too."
and that's when i wanted to point out to all of the kids at the party that ALL of their dad's had rifles. not a party you would just want to crash folks.
-chris is known as the 'cheap guy' on his squad. he gets ridiculed for his views of not wanting to live in debt, and for driving a '97 town car (c'mon! it's a lincoln for crying out loud!...), and for giving his kids a used gift from craigslist for christmas (a $70 thomas train table complete with tracks and 5 trains. that would have cost us over $160. something we are not looking to spend on out kids any time soon. especially since they still have no idea what christmas really is.) chris continues to have a winning attitude about it all. he embraces it. so the squad did a $25 white elephant gift exchange, and chris decided we should buy a $30 gift and take $5 out of it. so we went to costco, bought a bottle of vodka for about $20, and a bin of chocolates (that were individually wrapped) for $10. we took a good portion of the chocolates out and presented the gift. every one loved it. but in hindsight we probably should have taken out $5 worth of vodka. ;)

anyhoo, hope you are enjoying your holidays as much as i am enjoying mine!