Christmas ever 2007

Last night months of planning for Christmas eve and a large group effort finally paid off. The Christmas eve clock finally struck zero hour and Christmas eve. Around 6:00 people started arriving one after another to fill up the lodge and enjoy in a festive feast.

What a feast it was, I lost track of everything that was there available to eat. People had one or two things specifically eyed up became full before they even managed to to get to what they had their eye on. It was a feat fit for the finest of kings and enough to feed a very large army. Everyone had a chance to bring breakfast home for this morning, I know I just finished off a Hot Sausage Hoagie that I didn't have room to put last night.

After the feast I think we had 23 people participate in the Chinese Gift exchange. many of which have never been involved with one and playing for the first time. I think the exchange itself was the excitement and provided much of the nights entertainment. There were a few people who had selected and only one gift was stolen. Once we started to get about half way through the entertainment started. Gifts were starting to be stolen and restolen and so on. From tool sets to digital picture frames on a keychain, everything started to become fair game. The final play of the night was made by Mary, who was in the #1 position and started and ended the gift exchange. I think that this went well and created a few memories for everyone. It's not what you got, it's about the ever lasting memories that you created obtaining it.

There were plenty of images taken last night, not only from my camera but Kim, Amy and a few other had their cameras going preserving a special moment in time. I have already uploaded all of my images to my server and the Christmas 2007 Album is uploaded and online. I have also uploaded the images to Kim's Flicker site. I'll let her manage how it's presented, I have uploaded the images for her. Kim and I have agreed to burn of CD of each others images so we can both share similar images on the both of these sites. Hopefully I can get copies of other photos that were taken and create one big collection.

For me, this Christmas was long over do. It was a time of reconciliation and a time to spend quality time with family. There were no TV's, Video games or any other forms of electronic entertainment. There were board games, but we really never had an opportunity to play them except for a little random trivia as we were stringing popcorn the night before in preparing TreeZilla. Everyone left fed and had leftovers in tow. There were magical memories captured in many different formats and there were irreplaceable memories created and preserved. There was interaction, appreciation, love and special memories created in the whole process.

I have to send out a Thank You to everyone who helped make Christmas Eve 2007 happen. I had a goal of creating a piece of time that we will all recall for years to come in our fondest of memories memories. I think we did it we just successfully created that memory. This was not your typical going through the motions what did I get type of Christmas that our society has grown accustomed to. I think the only thing that could have made this any more special was a little bit of snow on the ground, but I guess we will have to keep striving for perfection.

Merry Christmas to all and thank you for helping my dream come reality.