Another Holiday Celebration!

Last night, our family hosted a holiday party (more like a dinner with friends). We went to their place the night before and had dinner/played Balderdash with them and we reciprocated by hosting a dinner on Thursday. Whenever we get together for dinner, we always play board games; Wednesday was Balderdash, Thursday was Ticket-to-Ride. Two funny things that occurred while playing Balderdash:

1. My mom was the host (meaning she was the one that held the card with the correct answer). She rolled strange laws and we had to write down what we thought was illegal to remove in theaters in Winnetka, Illinois. Most people wrote down shoes, socks, shirts, etc., which my mom read, and then she read the option “riding your bicycle into a swimming pool.” umm….okay. Sometimes we have really “out there” answers to throw people off (since some of the real answers are oftentimes really out there) but this one was just…so odd. ONE person picked riding your bicycle into a swimming pool and we were all kinda laughing (I mean, it didn’t even MAKE SENSE) and when we were tallying up points, my mom gave the guy TWO points for getting it right! Then my brother, who was sitting next to my mom, looked at the card and realized that two cards were STUCK TOGETHER! hahahaha - it reminded me of the Friends episode when Rachel makes the trifle with beef, peas, and mashed potatoes because pages in the cookbook were stuck together!!

2. We had to re-do a bunch of the cards because people weren’t following the rules so we just discarded the piles of notecards where we wrote our definitions/weird laws/movie themes/etc into a middle pile. James, who was sitting next to me, was the host and read two of my cards, so I asked if he had read every person’s definition of a word, to which he responded, yes. I asked if he was SURE, and he said YES, and then he showed me the card (which was my old card) and it was because Albert, James’ dad, crossed out MY name and replaced it with HIS! He didn’t care enough to think of something new! I could not stop laughing but I couldn’t tell anyone at the table because then we’d have to redo the card (and we’d been redoing cards ALL night).

On Thursday, we hosted a party at our house and had hot pot (similar to what we had at our aunt’s house in Raleigh). Here’s the set up:

We also had edamame and while my mom was preparing it, I asked, oh, is that edamame? And my mom responded, “no, it’s already made.” Sometimes my mom is just too funny!!

I also made MAGICAL cookies and a delicious chocolate cheesecake for the party:

The cookies are cream cheese based and to find the sprinkles, we had to drive to THREE different grocery stores (are those sprinkles just not popular?) I like the sprinkles we bought because I feel like they’re a bit crunchier than the jimmies that are easily found in grocery stores.

The chocolate cheesecake I made was SO delicious and it took FOREVER to bake because our terrible GE oven kept locking (and has been since we purchased it). Everything was made from scratch - even the crust! It was made from fresh oreo cookies (I licked the cream off every single cookie :)) Basking the cheesecake actually took around an hour total (including the crust). Here’s the final product:

After dinner, we played Ticket-to-Ride, one of the coolest board games EVER. James and I were on a team and we were thisclose to winning (if we had only won the extra 10 points by getting the longest chain). My brother, who played by himself, WON, with 112 points, James and I came in 2nd with 105, my mom and Shane came in 3rd with 89, and Albert and Cindi came in 4th. Here’s the final board:

Today (Friday) we watched The Devil Wears Prada, Mission Impossible 3, and The DaVinci Code (we’re taking advantage of the Blockbuster online rental plan, obviously). I also managed to highlight my hair (it’s much darker now) and I’m getting a cut tomorrow. We’re also headed to Raleigh tomorrow and on Sunday, we’ll be heading to Cindi and Albert’s for a New Year’s Eve dinner!