4th Annual Ugly Sweater Christmas Party

This year was our most successful Ugly Sweater Christmas Party yet.  Great turnout, amazing ugly sweaters, delicious food contributions from everyone (Where have I been for the past 3 years?! If everyone brings one small dish it makes hosting SO much easier!), hilarious games, and Shannon's incredibly generous and brilliant suggestion to have all 12 kids watch a movie two doors down at her house after dinner with babysitters to reduce the chaos.  It worked like a charm.  The kids were having a blast and WE were having a blast without the kids! :)  Is that mean to say?  I felt terrible asking people to leave their kids home, but it is so hard to have a good time when you're trying to keep track of your child the whole time.  It worked out so perfect to have us all together for dinner and then send the kiddos on their merry way to the other house, but still be close enough to have the sitters bring them back if they needed anything.  We've decided we are definitely doing this again when attempting neighborhood game nights in the future.

Modeling our gorgeous sweaters

Anyway, back to the par-tay.  Here we are in all our festive glory.  After din-din and settling the kids into a Christmas cartoon we played several hilarious rounds of Telestrations.  Are you familiar with this game?  We were introduced to it at Thanksgiving at Catherine's house and absolutely love it.  Basically it's like playing a game of telephone, but through drawing.  By the end, the original prompt is almost always distorted into something completely different.  Here are a couple of examples that had us rolling with laughter!

I love how Krissy thought that word #2 was "archery" instead of "artery"! Ba ha ha!

Okay and I think we all laughed for about 5 minutes straight when we saw Burke's drawing on #5 below.  He was trying to draw a guy leaping over a log, but look what Cath and Matt guessed it was in #6!  Burke was so embarrassed and when Kelsey and Ever were displaying the series of pictures at the end of the round he said, "Er...that looks a lot worse from here!"  :)  If you haven't played this game, you've got to try it out.

Next we did a series of holiday Minute-To-Win-It games that I put on for my in-laws at Christmas last year. I was too busy arranging the games to get any pictures, but again, it was very funny and I loved seeing how competitive some of our friends became in the heat of the moment!

Following that we did the classic game of unwrapping a series of presents while wearing over mitts when you roll doubles with the dice.  It is always so fun to see adults getting into a game like little kids.  I only got the last 30 seconds of the round on video before Ashley managed to get her prize of aloe-infused Christmas socks (ha ha!) from the box, but this kind of encapsulates a portion of the frenzy.  

Finally we all voted on the best sweater and Brogan stole the show, with Brandalee as a close second.  Those lucky ducks scored some pretty amazing prizes courtesy of the D.I.  I know, I know, you all want one of your own to display at home don't you?  :)

Brogan with the grand prize - creepy singing snowman

Ah, yes, and let's not forget the jewels we found at D.I. in this set of ceramic butt-cheek chubby ladies leaning against watermellons (what the?!).  I was absolutely shocked to find them still on my table at the end of the night.  Brandalee - they will look so perfect on your piano in your living room, don't you think? :)

And of course we had to finish the night with my traditional peppermint birthday cake adorned with the same little winter cake toppers that my Mom has used since I was 2 years old.  Burke made them all sing to me, which was both embarrassing and nice.  It was a great night to celebrate the season and being a whooping 25!