fondue

this last weekend, we got to enjoy a night that I look forward to all year. It's silly, but I love it. Each year, we have a Christmas party/fondue feast/white elephant regifting bash. It's sort of a small group of us (needs to be for fondue) and such a fun group. It's actually the same group of friends that Husband hung out with in high school. By sad comparison, I've had very little contact with anyone from high school and only manage an occasional visit with even my college girlfriends. It simply turned out that way as life took us down different paths. But fortunately, we still get to see Husband's high school gang on a semi-regular basis and it's such a blast, especially since they all married such amazing women. (In fact, I think some of us women are even closer than the men now.)

We invited everyone over to our place for our 4th annual holiday bash and in regular fashion, started an hour late. Dinner was fantastic with a traditional cheese fondue with an assortment of breads which we ate at the same time as the main course (we were hungry!). We've tried doing the main course as fondue as well but it's messy and high maintenance, so this time we grilled steak, chicken and vegetables and let people cube it themselves and dip in sauces from our extensive condiment bar. We feasted and talked and laughed and had such a blast. Once everyone had their fill, we did a quick shuffle and reset as we prepared chocolate fondue with strawberries, bananas, apples, cinnamon bears, vanilla wafers, oreos, marshmallows and pretzels.

After the feast, we lounged around in the living room for the gift exchange. The first year, we declared it must be a "re-gift" since we we had all been married within the past few years. We had some random gifts (like a rooster clock or an electric flyswatter), some strange gifts (santa lingere or self-help books) and some really great gifts (pyrex, a wok, a desk water fountain or wall decor). But the gift quality has declined into the more "white elephant" style (a toilet seat, an opened jar of soynuts, a richard simmons vhs, a pack of baby diapers). Perhaps next year, we will need new guidelines to change things up a bit.

Meanwhile, the kids had their own party downstairs under the supervision of our favorite babysitter. At the end of the night every one was exhausted, the house was a wreck and it had been such a GREAT evening.