Houston Holiday Fun Time

With Thanksgiving being so late this year, the holiday events at work were jam-packed into the first two weeks of December.  The first weekend was the Nutcracker Ballet- we had tickets to the performance (good seats!) and a reception in the Green Room with a backstage tour.  I managed this event from beginning to end, and there were extra tickets that were going to go to waste, so I got to go.  Normally we don't attend arts performances, but I couldn't pass up such good free tickets to the Nutcracker! The Houston Ballet is critically acclaimed, but I still prefer the Denver performance (not that I'm biased or anything...)

My favorite holiday event was a bike building party for all of the hospital directors.  Our hospital president wanted to do something philanthropic rather than just have another party-  we ordered 50 bikes and all of the tools needed to assemble them. I think the attendees had a good time, and all of the bikes were built before the party was over!  We also had a bar set up and food catered for the event. The bikes, along with other toys, were later given out to under privileged kids at a Breakfast with Santa.

I made out like a bandit and took home a bunch of leftovers to serve at our Lights in the Heights party the following weekend.

For our White Elephant office party, this year I was brave and gave the gift of "One Live Fiddle Tune played by Erin B" (along with one of those plastic tube candy canes filled with mini bottles of booze).  It is fair to say I won the party.  I was surprised how many people didn't know I played the fiddle considering I tell this to everyone I meet..The hostess even bribed me with "Whatever bottle of wine you want" if I played another song so I came home with 3 bottles of wine and some MD Anderson Christmas Cards.

 Lights in the Heights happened again and we had another party.  My friend Ellen had planned to have a party too but had to cancel at the last minute, so we combined parties which meant there were a lot of random people in our house but that made things more interesting! I made another batch of punch and people brought so much food and things to drink! All of my bike party leftovers were consumed too.  I tried to make boozy jello to cut into Christmas shapes with cookie cutters- it didn't set up right so it came out as boozy bright red and green goo but people still ate it! I was in major bottle/can pick-up mode, in hopes of preventing a bad cleanup the next morning, but still managed to have a good time. The house was clean and everyone was kicked out by 1:30 a.m.