Wow, what a couple of weeks it’s been! Between being swamped at work, ramping up for our Bonaire trip, and preparing for last night’s Christmas party, I’ve basically been a total basket case (and Jeff has been a total saint putting up with me).

I’ve been baking like a crazy person for the last week, anticipating hordes of hungry people at our party. I think I’m still stuck in college-party mode, and tend to assume that everyone eats like a teenage boy. I tore through two sacks of flour, 2 and a half gigantic things of sugar, and more than 20 eggs in my baking frenzy, winding up with 2 batches of fudge, 2 BIG batches of butter cookies, orange macaroons, three batches of pfeffernuisse, some spritz cookies, 2 batches each of M&M cookies and fudge crinkles, all taking up about 6 cookie tins, 8 plastic containers, and random ziploc bags.

I may have overdone it just a smidge.

Kris and Sarah arrived in town late Saturday night, so they got to join in on the pre-party fun of cleaning the house and setting everything up for the approaching hordes. For those of you not familiar with our annual Christmas festivities (though I don’t imagine anyone who would be reading this in the first place falls into that category), we basically invite everyone we know over for cookies, drinks, snacks, cookie decorating, and ornament painting, all to a soundtrack of my tacky collection of christmas music. It’s always a blast; particuarly watching all our very different friends from different places socialize amongst each other, and usually doing an excellent job of it!

Everything was good to go loooong in advance of anyone actually arriving. The tree was lit; the various types of ornament crafts were laid out in the office; cookies were spread out over the entire dining room table (with all the refill tins stacked underneath); and my sister Katie and her boyfriend Joel finished their drive down from Berkeley with enough time left over to grab a quick nap before the party.

We had a rather different crowd this year: more work friends, fewer college friends – and more kids! We seem to be in that awkard in-between phase of life where we have just enough friends with kids that it’s no longer really an adult party, but not enough friends with kids for the kids to break off into their own social groups. I think it went pretty well anyway, though, and I certainly enjoyed meeting all the kids, and watching them go nuts with cookie and ornament decorating! I was actually kind of jealous of one little girl’s dress: I’ve been DYING to find some sort of tacky, Mrs Santa Claus style outfit to wear to these things, but they don’t seem to make them for grownups (except in the lingerie milieu). Here’s 3-year old Sidney showing off some of her beadwork:

The Negrons and Gelinos both brought their (surprisingly well-behaved) little ones along, as well. Alex Gelino has been getting handed around crowds of admirers since he was about 4 weeks old: here he is moments before spitting up all over Kathy, with Melissa and Christopher on the left:

(Kathy really didn’t mind; any anyway, I have huge piles of spare shirts that are only kind-of-too-big for her, from when I was a bit smaller!)

I flitted around the party like the social butterfly I am, unfortunately not really getting much time to socialize with anyone in particular for very long. But that’s why I’m lucky to have so many friends who are excellent at socializing with each other. :)

One highlight of the evening was forcing Jeff to hold The Baby. Here he is with Alex, in what turned out to actually be a pretty cute picture of Jeff:

And finally, here’s a shot of the Clower ladies with their men: my Jeff and Katie’s Joel.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by – we had a great time! And we’re well stocked with wine now for the next few weeks! :) (We also have quite a few leftover cookies – big surprise – so all you who work with us can expect them to start showing up at the office in the next few days.