December Daily: Day 16

Yesterday was quite a busy day! It started with a completely beautiful morning. As I drove out to the highway, all of the trees, grass and bushes were covered with frost - it's that frost that you don't see too often... where it looks like everything is made of snow and ice and it just sparkles. It was like that the day our family drove from Munich out to the Bavarian castles the year we were in Germany for Christmas... maybe that's why it seems special to me. I took a quick photo with my phone as I drove out of my neighborhood.

And today's entry...

It was our department Christmas party at work. I went in and had a meeting, did my morning reporting, and then we had brunch and played games. We had a few rounds of fiercely competitive dodgeball in the gym and then we each got a Visa gift card and the afternoon off. Yay!

I stopped at the American Crafts Warehouse sale on the way home (I had a $5 off email coupon... can't pass that up, right?) and picked up a few things - even the new Chap collection of paper for just $4. Sweet! Then at home, I worked on some smaller Christmas projects that I wanted to do if I had time. Check that off the list! Woot!

Then, my cheesecake and I got dressed up and went over to Darren and Mindy's house for our Peanut Gallery Christmas party. Laura, Brent Roper, Brent and Sherilyn, Chad, Courtney and Sean came and we had an absolutely delicious potluck dinner. Darren made his famous and delectable beer steak, we had baked potatoes and salads, fruit, dips and crackers, veggies and dessert. In addition to my cheesecake, Chad made a really yummy pumpkin pudding.

We just hung out around the table, talking and laughing and eating. After a while, we headed down to the basement where we did our gift exchange. It was white elephant style, but we did nice gifts. We had a lot of fun - talked and laughed a lot more. It was lots of fun to see Roper - he's been deployed for the last 6 months and we've missed him! We're going to try and get together again after the new year before he has to move his family to Japan. (Good excuse to go to Japan, though... right?)

Today's prompt from Shimelle was about gratitude, and this was a perfect day to talk about that along with the events of the day. I'm grateful for a good job with great people. For hobbies and leisure time and the opportunity and ability to do them. I'm grateful for having plenty to eat and for good friends. As BC said last night, this (all of us and the fun and friendships) was totally worth forty-two thousand dollars. (We'll see if we still think that when loans start to come due in February. Yikes!) It was a great evening and we had a blast.

Here are a few more shots. Some of the gang along with our yummy spread of food...

And then a few photos I managed to get of a hilarious little episode where Brent discovered the aerosol whipping cream I brought for the cheesecake and Chad decided to help him in his endeavors.

A few pictures from the gift exchange...

(the Orabrush was pretty funny... we did a case study on them and the CEO came to speak to our class. Pretty funny YouTube videos, plus their product really works! This was a hot commodity.)