T'was the Night Before Christmas

Christmas Eve found us, once again, enroaching upon Courtney and Paul's friends, as they are forced to invite us by proxy.

Julie and Charlie are extremely nice, and we had a wonderful time. I was amazed at the spread - I was expecting something along the lines of cheese and crackers, and instead I got a meal that included a ham. So we sat around and ate, getting to know everyone and gaining 10 lbs.



Here you can see us on the deck - their house is actually built right on the edge of a valley, so the deck actually hung out in space. It was really neat, but I kept having visions of the deck tragically collapsing and falling down the mountain. I was STILL eating, after all. I spent my time on the deck looking for handholds to save myself from doom after the collapse.



After dinner (and drinks) we played a fun game of pictionary, which as most of you know, I happen to adore. My team ended up winning, after a sneaky strategy involving Distraction by Crying Baby and me yelling really loud.


Court ended up being the best guesser ever





David considers his blank canvas



I'm not sure when the volume control got turned up, but towards the end i started SHOUTING everything for no particular reason. Very unlike me. I was pardoned, because whenever multiple people from both teams got it at the same time, the one thing everyone could agree on was that they heard me say it. HA.

My loud vocals in action



Once again, there was some Wii action. Charlie thought the fact that David bowled from his chair was hilarious, while he himself got so into it he ended up stumbling across the room and fell over a chair. Nice.





Finally, we were once again shamed by Hawaiian Giving as Julie and Charlie bought us GIFTS! What?! Seriously, this kept happening out here. People I hardly know kept giving me nicer presents than I got them, if I got them one at all. I spent a lot of this month being humbled. So much for southern hospitality.