Christmas Parties

December was filled with Christmas parties this year for Matt and I.

Ward Christmas Party:

My ward put on a "Christmas Around the World" themed party which I was asked to help plan. I suggested we decorate each table with decor from a different country but I had no idea we would actually be able to pull it off. Thanks to help from other ward members, my co-workers, and one of the ward members who has a storage shed full of knick knacks from different countries, we decorated the heck out of the church gym.

We also had ward members bring international foods to share and had multicultural entertainment with a group singing a Korean song, cha-cha dancers, Bollywood dancers, a guitar duet of "Stille Nacht" and more. I was asked to sing also but with such late notice and having to spend the whole evening before decorating, I sang an acapella version of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel".

I had so much fun being a part of such a grandiose event. It reminded me of my old activity planning days in the La Jolla singles ward.

Check out the pictures below highlighting some of our decor:
Europe Food Table

United Kingdom table

North America food table

France table #1

Japan table

Spain table

Mexico table

Africa table #1


Turkey table

Korea table


France table #2


Sweden table


Scotland table

Africa table #2

China table

Italy table

Canada table (yes I did put Matt's maple syrup on the table - you try coming up with things for Canada)

Russia table (thanks to Josh for lending me his hats)

Australia table (complete with Tim-Tams)

Ireland table


The nativity (from Oriental Trading Company)


Decor for the US food tables (finally put our old shot glass collection to a good use)

North America food table


Asia food table


Keri's Work Christmas Party:

Here are photos from my work's Christmas party that we had a local country club.

Hanging with the event planners

Since we were all sporting black and white polka dots, we had to take a photo

All the ladies wearing black and white

Me and Mauricio in front of the Cider/Hot Cocoa station complete with signs reading "May The Cider Be With You" and "Live Life and Drink Chocolate" 

Nicolette, me, Kristin and Christine
We rented a photo booth for the occasion and spent a good hour messing around in there.

My whole department crammed into the booth 

Just messin around (Diane, Christine, me, Nicolette and Sarah)


The social committee (group that plans all work events)

Modeling the SVCF scarf we received that day as a gift from the foundation


Matt's Work Christmas Party:

Deloitte had their holiday party at the HP Pavilion. Knowing it was going to be full of alcohol but no food, Matt and I went out to dinner at BJ's before heading to the party. Then we spent an hour chit-chatting with his co-workers drinking shirley temples. They had a photo booth and a whole spread of desserts but we didn't want to wait in line for the booth so we had some friends take a picture for us.

It's always fun talking to Matt's work friends outside of work but we were tired after a long work week so we headed home as soon as everyone started getting liquored up.

Matt and I at dinner
Handsome beast

Matt and I at the Deloitte party

Unfortunately we have some crazy red eyes in these pics that Picasa wouldn't remove.



Happy New Year!


KerMatt's
2012 Highlights
  •  Our move to Mountain View - a 14 mile difference that saves us at least 2 hours each weekday in commuting (Shout out to the 16+ people from our old and new wards who helped us move on a very rainy day)
  • Being able to commute to work by bike and longboard
  • Two family reunions with the McGhees - one in San Clemente, the other right here in the Bay Area
  • Our trip to New York in May to celebrate our 3rd Anniversary
  • One new nephew (Alex) and niece (Julie) and one more still on the way, now making it 16 total
  • Keri’s road trip to Utah in the fall to visit many of you
  • No longer being a one-car family and Keri learning to drive a manual
  • 22 blog posts written by KerMatt: follow us at kermatt.blogspot.com
  • 38 times Keri shopped at Target and 15 times Matt ordered pizza
  •  ~61,000 airmiles Matt traveled to work in 9 different states - including North Carolina, Utah (twice), New York (twice), Texas, Wisconsin, Florida, Washington, Rhode Island, Ohio, and Vancouver, Canada.


Thanksgiving

In celebration of Thanksgiving, we put on a potluck a couple days before Thanksgiving. It was the most unconventional Thanksgiving feast I've ever had from sushi rolls to lumpia and German brats to pumpkin pie. My coworkers love bringing food and we no matter how well we plan, we never seem to have enough food tables set out for all the goodies people bring. 

Being on the social committee, I helped to plan for the event but this time my main responsibility was to make a slideshow of Thanksgiving quotes. This is what I made: http://prezi.com/uyutu2j6ww_j/thanksgiving-2012-svcf/.

We had an amazing turnout including a few board members even joining us. Here are some pics from the event:

Some of our decorations

Posing on the "Thankful" wall that we misspelled and then tried to make up for it by adding in a K and making it look like a turkey.

Me and my co-worker Diane and partner in crime on the social committee

Yes, I'm Thanful for many things :)

The foods posters trying to guide people which section their food belongs in

More centerpieces

Some of the social committee

A picture of the top of the funeral potatoes I brought and were a big hit

My slideshow

Diane and Isabel

Filling up our plates

Diane, Isabel, Christine (who was the mastermind of this year's Thanksgiving potluck, me and Sue


About halfway through my first plate of food, my stomach started feeling uneasy and I hardly made it through much more. Sadly something I ate did not agree with me and although I never ended up throwing up, I took the next couple days off at home due to feeling like I was going to vomit at any minute. Oh the joys of potluck!

By the time Thanksgiving actually came around, I was still recovering and probably ate less on Turkey Day than ever before. Matt and I headed up to his Grandma's house in Walnut Creek and had lunch with Grandma, his Uncle Ridge, Aunt Linda and his cousin JJ. 

As we were driving up to Grandma's parking lot, we were fortunate to see this gang of wild turkeys strutting around as if this wasn't indeed Turkey Day! It was amazing! I made Matt stop the car so I could take some pics.



After eating, we took a nice brisk, walk to try to not fall asleep. Matt also spent some time helping his Grandma with her computer questions. Then we headed off to Fairfield to try to catch the end of my family's dinner and festivities at my parent's church building.

By the time we got there, most people were gone but we did get to witness Bo, Seth and Josh in the gym not actually playing basketball, but chucking the basketballs as far as possible down the court while yelling at the top of their lungs. I'm not sure how it came to this but I felt like I was watching The Gladiator or a Michael Jackson video or something. Nothing in my family is ever normal :)

I almost fell over laughing so hard watching them grunting and throw, especially because Seth never actually yelled but instead did some kind of little "yip-yip" yell.

Matt rallied them all to shoot hoops but eventually joining in our their basketball chucking game, though he also did not do the yelling. But he agreed that it was quite fun. 

We spent the night at my parents and my mom and I hit up the malls the next day for some Black Friday shopping though we have learned our lesson about trying to participate in the crazy morning hours. We had a blast in the late morning hours when most people had already gone home.