Crazy Sock Christmas Party

Looking for an ultra-easy and cheap party theme?? Read on...

The invite said:
-Prizes for most outlandish socks
-Bring your own plate, cup and silverware
-Bring your favorite holiday side dish for 10

When people walked in, everyone was given a baggie with 10 stickers in it to stick on people (ie: ugliest sock, most expensive sock, most colorful etc).

Here is Fabio, with many different stickers for his crazy socks.


Emma with her crazy stockings.


Then came the judging part. Table by table, everyone stuck their socks in air to show them off. Here's Tim and I giving the prizes out. Prizes were given based on who had the most stickers of each of the 10 categories. I glued candy bars onto ribbons, to hang like Olympic medals.
1. 100 grand= most expensive socks
2. Starburst= most colorful
3. Nutty bar= funniest
4. Extra gum= Extra mile (oldest socks)
5. Bit of Honey= Bit over the top
6. QQ gummies= Most GQ socks
7. Black black Gum= Boring Black
8. Sweet Tarts= Most feminine

Etc. It was hard to find prizes with the limited availability of imported candy in the stores here.


Then one per table came up. Here's some of the crazy socks.


Then they cat walked down the center of the room to bouncy Christmas music while everyone finished their dinner.


Here's Tim and I passing out the prizes (Tim and Tanner off to the left). You can kinda see the candy bars hanging from my arm,and I'm holding up the 100 Grand Bar prize.


My favorite part of the party was that we could invite some of our favorite Chinese friends. There are many parties we go to where the Chinese are not allowed to attend if there is religious content.

The government doesn't allow the local Chinese to meet with foreign Christian churches, and the same holds true for church parties. We got around this b/c this was just a crazy sock party, no religious content.


We had about 80 come. I would say about 40 were kids. I don't think we've ever had a party without kids. They have so much fun at the parties. Every single person came that said they were going to come on the evite. This totally made the day!


We got 8 per table, and the food was the best! People brought sweet potato souffle, spinach souffle, strawberry creme souffle, I made two pot roasts, sweet n sour meat balls, others brought homemade mini cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls, Italian grilled vegetables, mashed potatoes, rice crispies, grilled pork, adorable decorated sugar cookies, fresh fruit and even banana bread.


Here's a good shot of my 'fancy' centerpieces. I hung socks by shepherd's hooks, sprinkled sequins on some cheap satin fabric. These were also the party favors for the ladies. The guys got individual toe socks. And of course we reserved the ugliest socks possible for those who happened to forget to wear some.

These socks included: hot pink/purple combo for Kevin (note: someone hid his shoes), 3-d teddy bear socks, and a few other calf high socks.


Where were all the kids you ask? They took off to the play room.


Here's Hunter, wearing his bumblebee costume from Santa.


Love this play ground! After dinner, all the kids went here to play, and the adults played games upstairs. I'll post that below....

But first, props to our photographer:

And of course, when you have a teenager photographer you are gifted with one of these beauties on the film strip. Thanks Benjamin, you're the best!

Santa at Work

Here is Santa being filmed on one side, me taking pics on the other. Man, Santa's been hittin' that fruit cake, look at that insta-belly Mrs. Claus hooked him up with (stole a pillow from the boys room).


Hunter and Tanner walked around to each of the desks (all 3 floors, about 250 employees) and asked in Chinese which pair of socks they wanted. Then Hunter wished them 'Merry Christmas' in Chinese. The cute part was whenever someone said something in return like 'handsome little Santa' Hunter would giggle out loud, and it made the rest of us laugh.


Tanner wanting to help.


And of course, papers to sign while he was in.


Then Tanner decided fish were more interesting than socks. He's usually known for asking for candy when he sees Tim's employees (totally embarrassing, should've never came here on Halloween). But toward the end he refused candy, only asking people if they had more fish.


Then just snuggled Dad. Sometimes sharing Dad with everyone can be taxing on a 3 year old.


Here is part of the basement floor, the rest had already left for lunch.


And it was time for Santa and mini-Santas to eat some North Pole imports... ahhh... Cold Stone in China... #4937 why you should visit us in China (and we're okay that the top 4936 are all shopping related), we'd just love to see you.

Christmas Breakfast

The evening of Christmas Eve, I learned that the News team was also coming for breakfast too. Yikes! I hadn't prepared for them eating here, so that night I arranged for 2 Ayi friends of mine (who also helped at the Sock Party later that night, love them) to come in the morning.

This is where it helps to know Chinese. This is b/c I had to teach every 2 seconds (ie, how to use a mixer, what measurements to use, how spread, how to chop to what size, etc). I never left the kitchen, and made the dishes side by side with them (maybe their next boss will appreciate this training, no?).

However, when the Cinnamon Roll dough was ready to be rolled, that part they basically turned into machines.

Back away Suzanne! This is where they got serious. They got that dough perfectly rectangular and even width in about 40 seconds flat!


Here they are laughing at me b/c I was so so so shocked... they moved so fast their hands look invisible in the picture.

opening presents... after breakfast (pics not in order). The news crew came to film us for 'US traditions' for Christmas. Wish I had a copy of the tape so you could see everything that went down, lol. Somehow all 4 of us ended up chasing each other around the house with rocket launchers and nerf guns.

With the camera crew. They were here for a few hours.

Someone tell me why Chewy always is a feature in our home, no matter the holiday. How weird that might look on film as an 'American Christmas Tradition'...

Here's the breakfast. I made a strip in the center of the table with the symbols of Christmas, and pieces of paper between each object describing their significance. IE: the candy cane is the shepherds hook etc (including the candle, tree, present, bow, stars, bells, wreath etc).

And, Hunter presenting colored Star Wars pictures to the camera men, lol. Because every family does that on Christmas, right?

Then we quickly changed into our Santa clothes to make a visit to Tim's work. Tim dresses as Santa each year and brings gifts to his employees. This year was 'socks'... sensing a theme here?

Mc-ing for Christmas

Last year, the boys were reindeer. This year, Santa's two helpers were 'mini-me's' of Tim.... er, uh Santa.

Thanks Tami C. for the beard/hat combo from America, it was perfect!


Here's our gang getting ready to MC (emcee) for the complex Christmas party.


And of course, this only led to picture posing time... everyone wants a picture with Santa, right? It's fun for the locals to take part in our Christmas traditions, and jump in for a photo op.

Think of it at posing with Buddha, now who wouldn't do that?

Missed you too!

I know I'm vain to think you missed me as much as I missed you...

Things have been, well, more than busy around these parts.

And... for the first time in 13 years (okay, 2nd), your Christmas card will be late :(... tell ya what, busy busy busy.

In no order (such is the theme of this season, lol), here's what's been going on:

Went to Hong Kong. Here we are w/ the skyline. When Tim was little, he was obsessed with skylines, so we love to take this kind of pic. The beautiful girls are Katie's, my good friend from high school.


K, if you're reading this, Katie, then you'll love this pic too. We scrambled to all get in the pic, but with the kids, and water near by, we just jumped in. And I'm reaching over to hold on to Tim... but it looks like I'm wrapping my arm around Sam. And I especially love this uncropped pic- for the guy off to the far right. Dude thought his tail would look great in our family pic, so he hopped in too, ipod and all.


A fam pic while at our hotel.


Hunter... the cutest little sheep in Bethlehem (front, left of the cow). Love that here in China there is no offense in having a full on Luke 2 nativity play.


Drum roll please... here's the real reason we've been a bit behind on things for the last month+... But we aren't allowed to blog about this, for another 6 months.


Tim's parents & aunts/uncles came to visit. Aunt Sandy (blond) said she'd adopt me as her own... made me feel like gold! We already miss all six of them!


After many ear infections, the ENT Dr said it was time Tann got tubes. No wonder why he was favoring Chinese so much- it's a language of tones. The Dr. said with his hearing tests, it was surprising he was talking at all! Yet another blessing of living here, the tonal language for Tootsie Tann!

His English vocab has already doubled since surgery.


These are the most recent pics of this bunch. This was last Saturday. We were the MCs for our compound party, in both languages. Afterwards, the news crew came home with us and interviewed us for about 30 minutes+. I love this picture of Tim. It reminds me of pics I saw of him when he was a student in China, long before we even met. He's got that sparkle his eye. That boy sure loves China.


Couldn't resist. Another one. The entire interview was in Chinese, and we must've looked weird- dressed as Mr & Mrs Claus. Do you remember that Santa suit I had made for Tim at the fabric market? Sure has gotten a lot of use!

He/Santa is going into work again on Christmas day, this time giving away socks to all 250 employees that have to work that day. The news crew will follow him in for that.

As if this year's Christmas couldn't get any busier... the news crew (China's largest news reporting station) will be joining us Christmas morning for the opening of presents. Shoot, that means I'll have to shower before opening presents... there's something wrong with that, no?

Christmas night we're hosting a dinner... a little on the ghetto side. Bring your own plate, silverware, glass. Bring a side dish for 10 people. And, wear your most obnoxious socks in your drawer; prizes to be given.

Anybody out there remember this 'funky sock' party we had in Castle Rock? I thought of the idea b/c we had new carpet, and I was worried that if we had a party the carpet would get hammered.

See, there's always a way to still have a party.


Here's about 1/3 of the students I've been teaching. I teach three Business English classes a week, only 4.5 total hours weekly. They are all advanced English speakers. They are all casual, we just had a pot luck in this pic. I have to write reviews on each one of them within the next 9 days. Argh, that's the not-so-fun part of my fun job. If you really call it a job. I love it too much!


In mid November, I got to fly home to see my family. It happened to be the exact 10 anniversary of Barry's passing. Here we are at the Grave Marker. Todd is reading the grave marker (I'll post about this later), so we are a bit somber. But the rest of the time was spent in up-roaring laughter. It is true, the pain is not as intense over time. We certainly miss him so.


Side note- on the flight out from China to the US, I sat next to a missionary. This was so special, because his MTC check-in date was the exact day as mine, 10 years earlier! And even cooler, I went from speaking English to learning Chinese; and he was going from speaking Chinese to speaking English (he was from sichuan, and he said there were over 80 missionaries in the field from mainland China!).

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