A Jolly, Flannely Christmas Party

The Houghs, all dressed up in flannel and festive pajamas.

HALLEJULAH!!!

We finally frickin' made it to Winter Break.

I'm not sure what it was this year, but I honestly didn't think I was going to make it there for awhile.  My students haven't been able to focus on crap these last three weeks, and it definitely hasn't helped that this year the gauntlet between Thanksgiving and Christmas was one week longer.  It made my valiant but foolhardy attempts at teaching all the more awesome, I can assure you.

Anyway, to celebrate the beginning of a two-week vacation of no work and no school, our social circle - the eight or so families we regularly hang out with - decided we should all throw ourselves a Holiday party, wherein all the kids do the whole 'Secret Santa' thing and buy one another $15 presents.  The wives thought it would be 'cute' if all the kids wore Christmasy pajamas, and the adults wear flannel. 

And since they're the ones really calling all the shots around here, that's what everyone did. 

Check it out. . .

The girls requested that we all 'dab' in a picture.  What's ironic about all of this - and a little sad, too - is that out of the four of us, I'm the only one who's dabbing correctly.  I attribute this to my prolonged exposure to teenage culture.

That's a lotta f**ing blonde children.

We husbands went ahead and let the wives spearhead and oversee the whole children's gift exchange fiasco.

The moms all exchanged ideas with one another so that they knew what to buy for one another's kids.  Kris suggested additional outfits for the girls' Our Generation dolls, since they've been playing with those a lot more recently as their collections grow.

As punishment (for lack of better term) for our hands-off approach to the whole previously-mentioned gift exchange crap, the husbands were given responsibility of the gingerbread house decorating.  We we set up a bunch of tables in Pete's garage and just stood around while the kids decorated their pre-assembled houses (Pete's wife, Andrea, had frosting-glued them all together the previous night to cut down on time. . . and calamity.)

Most of this half-hour or so of decorating entailed the kids eating and tearing through the candy 'decorations' while we all stood around and drank beer.  The wives that would occasionally come out to snap pictures weren't impressed.

The Cannonball's gingerbread house.

Wives and pudding shots.

After the gingerbread construction 'activity,' the kids retired into the basement for movies and playing and whatever the hell else they do down there, and we adults (and Alayna, who thinks she's 16 and 'too old' to play with 'little kids' - hence the tablet in this pic) played some Christmas Movie trivia game, Husbands vs. Wives (the Husbands won.)

Abby snuck a few selfies in with Kris' camera at one point in the evening.

Eventually, most of the guys ended up in the garage, where we set up Pete's Cornhole boards and played a few matches.  I threw surprisingly well this evening - while I never got one in the hole, I landed three to four bags on the board every single time.  Why don't I throw like this at Eight Point?

One of the kids snapped this of Abby, again with Kris' phone.

Vatos.

Without fail, at a certain point in time in every party we've had with this group of friends, we reach that point in the night where we start playing '90s Hip Hop, via Alexa, and then that's all we play until people start to go home.  I have nothing to complain about.

The kids liked to lay down between the boards and have the adults throw the bags over them.  'Cause, you know, kids are dumb.

- Brian