A Flurry of Christmas Activities

It all started Thursday night. Every year my office holds a Christmas dinner for the employees and their spouses. Very casual, just a great time. This year was no exception. Although our night started super late (8pm) we all joined up at Carrabbas in Orem (yay for not having to travel!) and I had THE most delicious sirloin marsala, mezzaluna (i don't know if this spelling is right at all), and chicken something or other that had a creamy lemon/butter/cheese sauce with herbs and sundried tomatoes. OH. MY. GOOD! It was awesome and even better as leftovers!

8PM- Thursday --- So dinner with spouses, usually on a Thursday, and then yesterday started at whole day of Christmas activities for all the employees.

8AM Friday --- It's tradition to sponsor a family for Sub-for-Santa. We had 4 kids this year so we headed to Old Navy to find the kids some clothes and then to Target to get them some toys and books.

10:15 am --- head back to the office. Some of the guys decided to get in a few minutes of work, some us of played foosball, and some geniuses hooked up Guitar Hero in the conference room and we got a few games in (fun game).

11:15am --- Headed to Orem for lunch at Jason's Deli and to meet up with one of the girls who couldn't make it until now.

1pm --- Laser Assault in Provo. I will admit I wasn't really too excited about this. I wasn't sure if I'd have fun or I'd be good at it, but holy crud, SO much fun. For anyone who hasn't been before, this place has vests you put on with these guns attached that look like mini dustbusters. You creep and crawl around and hide and sneak and look for people on the opposite team and try to get their lasers to go off via sensors on their shoulders and chest. We played two games, boys vs girls, then mixed it up for the second game. I did awesome the first game and came in 2nd overall (hooray for moi) but then the second game we used the buddy system and my partner Marisha came in second. I got completely sweaty and the fog machine made many of our throats a bit hoarse, but with 17 people, we were able to constantly be shooting and hiding. loved it. OH, so during the second game one of the guys turned the wrong way, smacked into a corner of a wall (which is just sheets of plywood...so sharp corners) and had to run to urgent care for some stitches. good thing we signed waivers, right?

2:45PM --- Headed to Jump On It in Lindon. This just opened probably 6 or 7 mos ago, maybe less, but it's a huge warehouse with bouncehouses and huge inflatable slides and over 2/3 of the floor is trampoline and they mounted basketball hoops way high up on the wall. They also have some on an angle up on the wall so you can run and jump up against the wall and you just FLY off. I think I sprained/bruised my foot during the course of our game of dodgeball.

4:05PM --- headed back to the office to see what our gifts from the company would be. They always have some awesome games/ways to choose gifts. This year they did it similar to how they did it last year. Survival rules (like the show). They also combined a game we often play for determining where we eat lunch called High Card. For lunch the person who draws the highest card from a deck gets to take off a vote from the options for lunch until there is only one place left and thats where we eat. For yesterday, the lowest card got to pick a wrapped present from one of the piles (more girly gifts, gender neutral, and more manly gifts) and that's what they got....
Well, that's what they got until someone stole it. So as the game goes on and people have gifts in front of them, people who get to choose a gift can either open one from the pile or steal an opened gift from someone. If your gift is stolen, you can either steal a gift from someone else or choose one from the pile.
Certain cards meant certain things. If a joker was pulled, you got to open two gifts from the wrapped pile and essentially choose one. Some gifts had another game called Penalties associated with it. For the ipod, you had to sing a verse of a christmas song to get it. For the 13ft trampoline, the last person to have it and didn't want it had to return it to the store (this was just because it was the largest box/gift and they didn't want to have to return it).
So I ended up opening the second gift and I chose from the girls pile. It was a beautiful white gold tennis bracelet and matching earrings from Nordstrom. I don't wear jewelry very often, so I was hoping someone else would LOVE it, too. Anyways, some of the gifts were definitely boys' gifts, some definitely girls (a pair of UGG boots and a Nordstrom gift card). So I ended up singing my way to this red iPod nano. Hooray! I wanted it for christmas but didn't want Ryan spending that much so we put it off until my birthday....I love my office! some of the other gifts were a Garmin GPS system, behind the seat DVD player car kit, Photo Printer, Digital video camera, digital camera, Portable DVD player (a WAY nice one), camping gear, an iZip Scooter, and a few other things I can't remember.

6PM --- head home. Sore. Sweaty, and probably smelly from all the running/jumping/ducking/dodging I did that day. Everyone ended up with something they wanted and was so grateful for working for some awesome guys.

I was soo tired and wanted to go to sleep, but hopped in the shower, got on some jammies and ran out to run a few errands with my husband.

Today I slept until 10:30am, then got up for only about an hour, then fell asleep again until 2:45, just as Ryan was heading to work.