December 21, 2006
MomTime Christmas Party
Last week my MomTime group celebrated our annual MomTime/DadTime Christmas party. This is the one time of year that the dads join us. We always meet for dinner and some kind of fun party game that everybody can play. We keep hoping that the dads will clique and become friends too.
This year I made up a silly game and called it “Eat Like a SCAVENGER Hunt!” We all met at Grapevine Mills, which is an indoor outlet mall on steroids. We began the party by eating an assortment of appetizers at Chili’s restaurant. (By the way, Tucker has a job as host at the Chili’s near our house.)
After laying a relatively healthy foundation of food in our bellies we divided up into two teams: Moms vs. Dads. We had 90 minutes to hunt through the mall and find as many of the items on the list as possible. You earned maximum points for eating them and half the points for simply finding them and taking a picture with everyone in the shot with the item. Sadly, half of my MomTime group couldn’t make it this year so there would only be four people in the picture, so it was doable.
I was afraid the guys would be too macho to ask a stranger to take a picture of them so I told them I would give them 25 bonus points for every picture they came back with that included the four of them. Since I couldn’t join in the hunt with the Moms (since I’m the one that came to the mall earlier in the day and spent hours finding all of the items) I was going to be our official photojournalist. I needed to guarantee that we would have pictures of the dads to put in my scrapbook layout that I was already planning in my mind.
Take a minute and click here to see the list of food items we were looking for.
Us girls jumped into the game and started working through our list. I was very good about not even hinting whether they were looking in the right place or not. Extra points were given for items that were really hard to find, like a Christmas Sweater Cookie in Marshall’s or Roasted and Salted Edamane in Bed, Bath & Beyond. I gotta tell you, these girls were impressive. They knew their mall and where to find things. We knew we were dominating! Especially after we ran into the guys and they were coming out of Bath & Body Works. What kind of food did they think they were going to find in there?
Come to find out later, they weren’t playing by the rules at all. They decided early on that there was no way they were going to beat us girls by playing nicely. They decided to jump on a little something I said and win by seizing the loophole. They figured they could earn more points by simply having people take pictures of the four of them all over the mall in a variety of situations, costumes, and positions.
I was so impressed by the boys’ ingenuity and the fact that they obviously had so much fun and even experienced some male bonding that I gave them the prizes even though the moms really did annihilate them if playing by the rules counted for anything. We ended the evening with dessert at The Corner Bakery. Although, us girls were stuffed from eating everything to earn maximum points.
One of the things God is doing in my life lately is expanding my heart when it comes to my capacity to risk needing my friends and love them without caution. I am very excited about 2007 and investing my heart and time into these wonderful friends God has given me. I will pray the same blessing for you. We need each other. And that’s a good thing.
Posted by weblion at 06:19 PM
