Christmas Party 2025

We had our annual Christmas party on Saturday the 20th from 3pm, with all of the usual suspects in attendance except for Frédérique and Vincent (who were having their own theater group holiday party at the same time).

I spent time most evenings during the week prior preparing baked goods. I made: Butterfinger bit cookies, chocolate peanut butter chip cookies, chocolate cookies with peppermint Hershey's Kisses and Christmas sprinkles, peanut butter cookies, pumpkin bread with walnuts, chocolate-covered pretzels with Christmas sprinkles, Devil's Food cupcakes with chocolate mint frosting and Christmas sprinkles, eggnog, Angel Food cake with chocolate mint drizzle and Christmas sprinkles, mulled wine, and two broccoli camembert quiches.

After the success of the 2024 Chinese Auction and the hilarity of the fabulous figatelli fit, I decided doing another gift exchange so soon would probably prove disappointing. Instead, we had a Cookie Exchange and a Guess-the-Number-of-M&Ms-in-the-Jar Contest.

For the Cookie Exchange, as guests arrived, the girls took their cookie contributions, added the information to the form they'd prepared to go with each family's box, and divvied the goodies up between the six boxes. Contributions were: Tanya's Family - ginger molasses cookies; Jenny's Family - millionaire shortbread; Mary's Family - cardamom snaps with rum glaze; Claire's Family - Olivier's homemade marshmallows, and candied almonds; Penny's Family - banana muffins; Sophie's Family - sugar cookies. Everyone seemed please at the end of the evening to have a special assortment of goodies to take home in a festive tin or box.

Olivier Schevin (PhD in Engineering), Claire's husband, won the M&Ms Contest with a guess of 285. The actual number in the jar was 270; the girls carefully counted them out earlier in the day. Claire was not much farther off with a guess of 290.

Olivier, Claire, Tanya, Sylain (with beer made by one of Pierre's friends)

Harry and Penny (Harry came from her in-laws in the Southwest)

At one point during her mentorship week, Maëva mentioned "Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer" to Jenny, who had never heard of it before and was quite horrified at the thought. Maëva insisted I play it for her at the party. I put it on and Mary and I sang along. I'm not sure that helped mitigate Jenny's horror in the slightest. If anything, it might have added to it . . .

Tanya and Mary

Tanya and Jenny