A Christmas Party to be remembered

Last night we had our Christmas Open House. I will start off by saying that my wife put a tremendous amount of work into this thing, between the planning, the addressing of all the invitations, preparation of food not to mention the fact that she decorated the house almost entirely by herself.

We sweated every detail up until about 15 minutes prior to the official start, and then the fun began.

The small Jazz Trio I hired off of Craigslist showed up and got themselves set up. I still wasn't dressed for the party, but I went in and talked to them for a few minutes asking to have a "Charlie Brown" sound to the music they played. They hit this one so far out of the park, let me tell you they were awesome. Anyone can stream audio from iTunes off a playlist, but live music that engages people, making them stop and listen, and better yet make requests. Let me tell you, live music was AWESOME.

Now, on to our guests. We sent out over 100 invitations. We tried to make the party early enough in the month to head off other parties, but I guess those other parties thought the same thing, so we were competing against other parties, however we had to the best of our ability 61 people come and celebrate with us.

My sister (WB) has her annual Halloween gathering, and I know in the past she has invited everyone from the President to the governor of Florida so I took a page out of her book and invited our State Senator, our State Representative as well as our Mayor. I am proud to say I am 3 for 3 in those people showing up. Now in all fairness to my sister, I know all 3 of these people through organizations I belong to, as well as a committee I am a member of so perhaps I had a leg up!

The party started at 6 and it went strong until around 9:30. We had people here up until 10:00. We had hired 2 girls to help out with keeping the food tables stocked, the garbage moving as well as the drinks flowing as well as to clean up after the party, and I will say that they were worth every penny. We like to have parties, but the cleaning up after always sucks, not this year. We actually went into the bedroom to watch TV while they finished cleaning up, and when they were done we were left with a house that if you didn't know just had a huge party, you wouldn't.

Needless to say, it was a great time, and one that I look forward to doing again next year. A lot of work and planning, but worth it.

For now, take care...