last friday, jason hosted a get-together with friends for christmas celebrations and rock band (of course).

he made egg nog cookies. they are magical things.

egg nog (with optional rum) was served in very fancy glasses. we have a lot of fancy glassware, by the way. many options.

the host always spends time in the fridge. (right?)

after dan arrived (in his very festive vest), jason kicked off the christmas celebration with a “yankee” gift exchange.

everyone brought a gift that cost $1 or less.

during round one, after everyone had drawn a number, each player picked a gift from the pile — no unwrapping yet! player #2 could either keep their gift from the center or trade with a previous player (#1, in this case), and so on. i like this round because it is fun to create speculation about what a gift might be!

i actually think it’s fun to do this mystery-gift-trading round once or twice more, but jason decided to skip right to round two.

to kick off round two, player #1 unwraps his or her gift. then player #2 unwraps his or her gift, and can either keep it or force player #1 to exchange. player #3 can keep, or trade with one of the previous players. and this continues through all of the players…

but, in the end, player #1 get final choice! he or she can claim whichever gift, of all of the gifts, that he or she desires.

during our exchange, melissa was player #1. she picked a kazoo out of the gifts and at the very end of the game — she wanted that kazoo back!

i actually traded a yoda-shaped usb flash drive for this giraffe bust. i want the whole collection of miniature busts!

after this, some friends stayed to enjoy santa’s slay with us, then we played rock band until about 2 a.m. — another fun evening!

i’m wishing a very happy holiday season for you and your friends, too. 🙂