The Hostess with the Mostest?

So this year, DH and I decided that we should have a Christmas Party.  Capital C.  Capital P.  Par-tay, people.  We've got an awesome group of friends and we get together *fairly* regularly.  There's New Year's parties, birthday parties, summer cook-outs, happy hours, Halloween parties, etc.   So we decided to throw Christmas party into the mix as well. 

First, the invites.  Do I evite?  Do I send "real" invites?  What message am I trying to send?  Because a lot of our parties revolve around tippy cup and drinking games, etc.  Do I want to do that?  I'm expanding to neighbors and other friends and co-friends - I don't know that they necessarily need to see how AWE-SOME I am at tippy cup.  I have a kick-arse team that we always try to get together because, seriously, we do rock.  But....do I want to do that?  Ordered invites from zazzle.com and they were super duper cute and had free shipping.  So that's that.

Menu - warm apps, goodies, and booze.  Done, done and done.  Simple recipes, but frickin good.  If I do say so myself (thanks to my seester and friends for bringing a couple things too!).

Kids - love 'em but they gotta GO.  Got one of our regular sitters and her friend lined up to watch my kids, my 3 nieces and nephew - even down the street at my sister-in-law's!  Wahoo!!   Cue 4:00, day of party - one of the nieces yuked.   NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  What the what??  Crap crap crap!  And no offense to my kids, but no, I didn't want to have to deal with them.  So I call up an awesome neighbor (seriously, she rocks) and she cancelled her sitter (who didn't want to sit anyway) and we had the two girls watch all of our kids at their house instead!  YAY!   We kept the babies home (9 months and 4 months) but the big boys stayed overnight at the neighbors!  WAHOOOOO! 

We had a pretty big crowd for a while, waned off a bit and then picked up again.  Boys did play some poker, girls gabbed and ate.  It was fun! 

I think fun was had by all!  YAY Christmas Par-tay!!! 

As here I sit at home on New Year's Eve.  Stinkin storm.  Oh well.  Kids are sleeping, wine is chilled and husband is across the street playing poker.  Life is good. ;)