I Can't Stop Partying

Welcome to Christmas Party Update Central

I still have one more party before I head home for the holidays, but I figured I'd go ahead and do a weekend party recap!

On Friday, we had the Westside Leadership Party and I got to create a new Christmas game for everyone to play! I think it went very well—getting people to do creative silly stuff is so much fun to watch (and participate in)!  The game involved the following supplies:

A roll of toilet paper
5 Red Vines
6 toothpicks
10 marshmallows
3 pieces of gum
5 paper clips
3 rubber bands
and 3 pieces of string/raffia

As part of the game, each group (4 people) had to pick out a hat the name of one Christmas Carol. They then had to use the supplies to create a visual representation of that Christmas Carol. I had little H.Stubs judge to decide which one was the most creative. And the winner was:

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER!

There is nothing quite so quality as seeing Evan dressed up as Rudolph, complete with red vines shoved up his nose!

Then on Saturday, I went to Heather J's Birthday / White Elephant Gift Exchange Party and it was jam-packed with good times! I got to hang out with friends, talk about New York, make awkward poses while hanging from the pull-up bar in their house, and of course I got some rad gifts! I got chocolates and biscotti—not bad for a White Elephant Gift Exchange! I must admit, though, the real fun times happened when this little guy made his appearance:

That's right, a bonafide fiber-optic peacock!

And then this afternoon, I joined up with some friends for a Gingerbread House Party! A few years back, I got to make a gingerbread house with my friends Cory and Chase and we decided to make a gingerbread crack house. I don't even remember why, but it was hilarious!  Here's a pic of us back then trying to make our crack house:

I had so much fun making that one back then that I decided to relive the fun by making another gingerbread crack house at the party! Here's what I started out with:

And here's how it actually turned out . . . after a long fight against frosting and graham crackers. It is quite literally a cracked house ;)

You see, it's perfect! The front looks just like any normal house on the block, and the real business goes on inside and in the back. Kelsey said, in reference to my creation, "It's like a mullet. Business in the front, party in the back!" The top of the house is covered with weed growing on the top and the inside contains "the lab." The back of the house even comes complete with an escape ladder to use when the cops come by to bust the joint!

Here are the other (read: more serious) gingerbread houses that were made by the others:

Erica's Lighthouse

 Josh's Tugboat

 Kelsey's Gingerbread House

Brian's Gingerbread House

Tomorrow night I have an Elf Party to go to and I'm so excited! Elf is one of the best Christmas movies ever and spending the evening quoting it and eating all of the 4 main elf foods is gonna be rad!

And as promised, I wanted to show you the fun postcard I designed for my community group! I truly love how fun these people are and I'm thankful that they went along with the zany idea to take pictures with the snowflake glasses on!

(click to enlarge)

I've Never Seen A Witch

 Me & T— ready for some trick-or-treating

A few weeks ago, one of my youth group girls asked me to go trick-or-treating with her, and I agreed because she's so fun to hang with and I haven't been trick-or-treating in forever (naturally). I had so much fun trick-or-treating with T— tonight! She went as a pirate and I went as a narwhal. We got so much loot! One lady even said, "Oh I have something SPECIAL for the big kids!" and she gave each of us a huge bag of M&Ms!

I loved being a narwhal this year too. It was extra fun because most of the adults were like, "Are you a unicorn?" and a bunch of the kids were like, "OH MY GOSH I LOVE YOUR COSTUME!!! I LOVE NARWHALS!!!"* I got a LOT of compliments and many confused glances from people walking up and down Market Street. I'm glad I got to get out and have fun this year—I felt like I was a kid again "oohing" and "aahing" at the fun pumpkins and decorations.

Here are some pics from the evening:

A legit Cake Wreck!
I think the pumpkin got sick of all the kids enjoying
the sweetness and wanted to try some himself.

 A super cute family trick-or-treating on Market Street

 A sweet pup ready for Halloween . . . ps: it's a boy!

 Raise your hand if you're having fun . . .

One giant bag of M&Ms coming right up

My loot from the evening!

And as a special treat, here is a fun video of my friend, Heather J. dressed as a kitty making me laugh. She thought I was taking a picture, but I was filming!

*caps lock & exclamation points totally part of the deal.

Angels We Have Heard On High

Tonight is a BIG night! Every Tuesday night, I meet up with my friends, Cindy B., Deb, Cindy J., Heather, and Clanci to watch Glee and Biggest Loser. Well tonight, we're shaking things up!

We are starting a friendly competition between us! We're going to be challenging each other to do the GAME ON DIET in teams and believe me, the trash talking has already begun in full force. When we were first working through the logistics, I learned that one of the other teams had a name and my team didn't. Well that just wouldn't do, so my teammates threw around some names and asked me to help pick one. From the list, I chose the most clever and fun one! After picking out the name, they asked me to design a logo of sorts for us to use to promote our team. Well ladies and gentlemen here it is—the logo for our team (the winning team), VICTORIOUS SECRET!

That's right folks! We're the angels ready to mangle the other teams! We each have our personal fitness goals and there is a strong system of accountability built into the diet, so it's also a great way for us to stay connected and build stronger friendships too! I've already been doing some prep work to get my body to ease into the changes a little smoother and I'm super excited about doing this with my friends. I'm really looking forward to what will come from it all!

Run Forward

Last night I got to go to my FIRST EVER professional soccer match! It was so much fun, and not just because we won, but because I was surrounded by wonderful people! The fans in the stadium were outrageous and fun but the company of the friends who invited me—the Reddys—really made the night exciting! I got to have quality conversations and learn a lot about a sport I'd never really taken the time to pay attention to. Although I must admit, I'm not a bonafide soccer buff, I feel like I don't have to be clueless in the crowd anymore.

Here are some photos from the evening:

GO SOUNDERS!

It's In Your Blood

I think if I was a Care Bear, I would choose to be Playful Heart Monkey. And just FYI, I totally count the Care Bear Cousins in the generality of "Care Bears," so Playful Heart TOTALLY counts!

Like Playful Heart Monkey, the world is my playground!
Take today for instance.
You see this bear?

Yeah. This one.
Well, today, this bear was my accomplice.

Every Wednesday, I attend a staff meeting at work. We usually go over all the basics: Buildings and Grounds, Publications, Computers, Office, and Appreciations. Appreciations is a new category we recently added to our meetings. It gives us an opportunity to share a short, sweet appreciation of someone on staff for something great we've noticed.

Today, a small number of other staff members and myself arrived to the meeting early and we were sharing some fun banter. Generally my co-worker H— sits in the same seat for staff meetings, but today I dared him to sit in a different spot just for fun and to shake things up a bit. After he moved, we laughed and then we all noticed the little bear you see above. It was just randomly sitting there, chillaxin' on the couch. So I schemed with my other co-worker, S— to coerce H— into "appreciating" the bear when it came time for the Appreciations category in the meeting.

The meeting was fun and light, and so when it came time for Appreciations, I looked over at H— and gave him the raised eyebrows hinting look. He looked at me, eyes wide, and then I motioned with my eyes toward the bear and he looked at it, looked back at me, and broke into a bright-eyed chuckle. Well after that, it was all over for me, I LOST it and started laughing and snorting. I just kept imagining what he would have said about the bear—how quietly it was sitting, how attentive it was, how even though it was blue it was seemingly happy. We dismissed shortly after that, and even though the bear never got its due appreciation, we laughed all the way out the door!

I LOVE staff meetings and I LOVE that I work with people who know how to have fun!

Pride and Joy

At my job, we have a meeting every morning where we all gather in the main office and say one good thing that happened the day before or that morning. We also have volunteers that join us. For the past couple of weeks, I've had one of the volunteers working with me in my office. It's been hilarious and we've exchanged banter about our hometowns—she's from New Mexico, I'm from Texas. In fact, she calls me "Texas." It's quite humorous actually. Yesterday I wore my UT shirt to work.

She kept making jokes about the hideousness of the shirt and it was so funny seeing her make faces when she saw the shirt. Well today in our morning meeting, she said that after seeing my shirt yesterday, she decided to "fix" the shirt and wear it in my honor:

It was hilarious! I wasn't completely offended, but it definitely fueled my feisty fun side! So in further creative retaliation, here's what I'm doing:

I printed out 2 pages worth of these suckers and right now I'm coloring them and I'm going to put her name in the center of each of them and stick them up in random places where I know she'll be. I'm also going to decorate her mailbox in the office with some fun UT paraphernalia. I've also downloaded the UT Fight Song and Deep In The Heart Of Texas to play really loud from my computer speakers every time she walks into my office.

The funny thing is, there's another volunteer here from Texas who has agreed to team up with me in the shenanigans and at first she asked, "What is the symbol for New Mexico?" and I was like, "I dunno. I never knew they had one." Then we both cracked up because we realized neither of us really gave enough thought about New Mexico to know more than the fact that it was a state. But man oh man, these office shenanigans are gonna be hilarious!