The Housley Christmas Party

Because Taylor and Valerie are in the middle of packing and moving to Colorado, we decided to have a family party before Christmas and before they left. Lucky for us, Chris and Debi were in town with Sara and Donny, so it was fun to have them join us. We tried something a little different this year in that we had 3 "centers" or "stations" for the kids with crafts that each of us were in charge of. Mom, Jordan, Erin and Clayton did gingerbread cookie decorating, Brett, myself, Taylor and Val had the kids make reindeer using their hands as the antlers and Jenny and Kim had a storytelling center. We also had our annual "Ugly Sweater" contest, enjoyed dinner together and had so much fun reading the poems that we had written about each other! It's been 9 years since we've started the poem tradition (we draw names and you have to write a poem about the person's name that you draw) and I have to say, it's one of the best traditions that we have! We even included the Readings and the Atauia's and Donny got out his guitar and SANG his poem to Theran! It was fabulous! We even got him to give us an encore so that I could record it and I'm going to try and figure out how to post it on the blog. So much fun! Thanks to all for your participation...love you guys!