A Western White Elephant

Ryans company decided to do something different this year for the company Christmas party. Usually we have a nice lunch at Market Street Grill in one of their private rooms and the guys play guitars and sing. This year they decided to have the party up at Bill George's Cabin up Parleys Canyon. It was a beautiful cabin way up on the mountain, infact you couldn't really get there unless you had four wheel drive, although there were a couple brave souls that did it with out. We have the Jeep so it was not a real problem for us. We had a great steak and chicken dinner and you could not ask for better company than this group of people. We are all like family it feels like, and everyone has a fun personality.



The big event for the night was the white elephant gift exchange. Ryan and I knew it would be fun with this group so we wanted to get something really good. We thought and looked everywhere for something with no luck, so the night before we headed out to DI as our last resort. DI did not disappoint. The first thing we found was this knit box that had knitted on it the words "MY STUFF" we thought it was a great one and put it in the cart. Then Ryan found this knit house and we thought that would go great with the knit box so we threw that in the cart as-well. As we kept looking up and down every aisle rummaging throw things we kept finding more and more of these knit houses and kept laughing more and more as we unearthed each one. They seemed to be everywhere in the store, a whole village just scattered about. At the end of our DI adventure we ended up with the knit box, 8 or so knit houses, a set of knit coasters, a big game bag (to hang a deer carcass in)complete with illustrated instructions, a 70's mini crumb vacuum, and a foam sandwich note pad. We knew we had done well when the cashier gave an, "ohhh" when looking at the items in our basket. The best though was when some of the houses did not have price tags on them so she had to call the manager to come price them. They debated on wether or not to charge us 50 cents or 75 cents and then the girl said, "how about 50 cents each?" and the manager replied "No, do two for a dollar." Our trip to DI could not have ended better we had so much fun. After that we went home to decide what to do with all that we had bought.



We decided to package all the none knit items together in one bag as a gift and then decided we would put one knit house in a bag and include a tag that said, "pick me you will not be disappointed, there is more to this gift". We then wrapped the rest of the village along with the box and coasters in a big box that we then wrapped and decided that this would be a mystery box that went along with the knit house in the bag. So whoever ended up with the knit house at the end of the game would also receive the mystery box. It was a hit at the party. Everyone was fighting over this stupid knit house due to the lure of the mystery box. It was hysterical. Brandon ended up winning it and we video taped him opening the mystery box. I was screaming laughing. This game lasted almost three hours and this was the perfect ending to the funniest white elephant gift exchange I have ever participated in. So thank you to the old lady who knitted all those houses and gave them to DI.



The rest of the night up at the cabin we stayed up late playing games and snacking on food and hanging out in our PJs. Jayna loved all the attention and enjoyed playing with Cash, Chips two year old little boy. The guys played music, and Jayna danced as she sat and listened. It was really fun.



The next morning we had a big but quick breakfast since there was a big storm coming in, and we all made it safely off the mountain and down the Canyon.