Party Animals

While we were home for the holidays, we partied quite a bit! 

Hagan Family Christmas Party
My extended family has decided that Christmas is not enough of a theme for our annual Saturday before Christmas party together. So a few years ago they started adding a theme on top of Christmas. So far we've had Mexican Christmas, Chinese Christmas, and this year, Cowboy/Country Christmas. We all dress the part, bring food and games/things to do that relate to the theme. My sisters and I use the party as an excuse to wear appropriately themed mustaches. Three years of themed parties, three sets of mustaches.

We made sure Lucy was dressed in the theme too, even though she wasn't invited to the party.

Fake guns on the table, gentlemen.

We ate chili and other country food, took pictures of ourselves looking like tough cowboys, did a "piece of junk" gift exchange where everyone brought a piece of junk from home and traded it in a game of "Dirty Santa," (we each donated the $10 we usually spend on gifts for this exchange to Kosair instead), and played games, including the "make reindeer antlers out of panty hose and balloons" team game, which our team came in last but was decided had the best antlers. Well, we decided we had the best antlers. I don't know about everyone else.

We added an extra balloon after the fact to make them actually stand up instead of laying straight across like a giant caterpillar....

I love my crazy family! We can't wait to find out what the theme is for next year.

Christmas Eve Eve
Every year since my senior year of high school, I get together with my girlfriends Emily and Elizabeth on December 23 for what we've dubbed our Christmas Eve Eve celebration.  We eat a lot of food, decorate Christmas cookies, and exchange gifts. It's always a good time and fun to spend a few hours feeling like we're still kids. :)

Tacky Christmas Sweater Party
Our friends Justin and Jenny have started a tradition of hosting a Tacky Sweater party right before Christmas. The party is always full of people who now live out of town but come home for the holidays to see their families. It's so much fun to see our old friends who we haven't seen all year and catch up with them, play games, and this year, sing karaoke. Oh man did we sing some karaoke. Elizabeth and I gave an emotional, heart-wrenching performance of Wrecking Ball. It changed people's lives. Or maybe made them all hate us. We aren't sure. But it was pretty memorable to say the least.

Wine and Cheese Pajama Christmas Party
Our Gamenight friends decided this year to have the Christmas Party separate from the New Year's party since we were doing the Murder Mystery thing for New Year's this year. Since the two parties were only 2 days apart, we thought we should do something different and classy, hence the wine and cheese. Then someone suggested a pajama party, so then it turned into a Wine and Cheese pajama party. (Our friends are ridiculous, as you may remember from previous stories about them.) We ate a lot, drank some wine, and exchanged gifts "Secret Santa" style.

Chuckie and Shane both came in superhero onesies. Unplanned. Perfect.

Obviously Grayson participated in the pajama theme because he's a dedicated Gamenight member.

New Year's Murder Mystery Party
I just decided this party will get it's very own post. There are just way too many pictures and things to tell about. Here's one picture to hold you over. Stay tuned.

UofL Sports Day
This year, the UK vs UofL basketball game fell on the same day as the UofL football bowl game. So obviously this deserved a party. With my parents, sisters and Chuckie's dad, we headed down the street to our friends Andy and Clay's house (who were out of town, btw, and were ok with us going over there anyway!) and watched both games on their gigantic projector screen.  Oh and of course there was a lot of gameday food. Did you have any doubt?

We lost the basketball game to UK (womp womp) but won our bowl game against Miami. So it was a good day overall. 

And that concludes the recap of parties! Murder Mystery New Year's Eve post coming soon.