Party #1

Carolyn warns me that it may be too simplistic to name our parties 1 through 5 because "you never know when we'll have another party".  For example, this evening we had our son and daughter-in-law visiting from Santa Cruz when our son and his family who live in Sacramento dropped in to pick up or put together their gingerbread house we had given them at Thanksgiving.  At the same time, Ben Saunders and his wife dropped by to discuss a vocal solo we'd asked him to do for the ward party this coming Saturday.  Carolyn saw it as a grand opportunity for a small dinner party.  They all accepted.  It came to 11 mouths to feed but that was only 3 more than we used to have every day when our kids were growing up.  So was this party 1A?

Anyway, the real party was last Friday evening when we had 15 people in our home who sing in our ward choir or are related to choir members.  That's about what we've had in the past although we should get almost twice that number.  But as far as our house goes, it is close to ideal.  We ate potluck then played a Christmas trivia game.

   We then came to the focal point of the evening - the gift exchange.

  The gifts can be new or second hand but they're supposed to be of some value to someone, not just garbage.  We discovered that sometimes a person's reaction to someone else's gift selection can be more hilarious than the gift selection itself.

There were lots of "stolen" gifts but people mostly felt good about what they took home.

The evening ended fittingly with the group gathering around our piano and singing a dozen or so Christmas carols.