We have a Party House, so we figure we should host plenty of parties. It’s been tradition to have a white elephant party every December (dating back a couple of decades to Colorado, although we didn’t host those). The beauty of it: the party is actually very easy to host. Invite a bunch of people and ask them to bring food and a couple of odd gifts. All we have to provide is the venue.
We missed last year because we were in shorts in the desert, and many of our friends have been asking for months (I’m not kidding) whether we’ll bring back our white elephant party. Of course we will. It turned out to be a smashing success, with over forty people– a new record!– in attendance.
As usual, there were plenty of gag gifts and a lot of horse trading. The “good” gifts– the ones you’d actually be able to use or at least put in your home without complete embarrassment– were frequently stolen. After Tom lost the famous lobster serving bowl, he grabbed a “snacklebox” of treats:
Here comes Jamie in an attempt to grab a head massager from Tom (who’s quite bald). Tom had a lot of things stolen from him tonight.
It’s always an adventure to open one of these gifts, not knowing if it’ll be something useful or something completely useless. Cam ended up with some sort of necklace (that was actually quite nice, and quickly given to his wife):
My favorite item of the evening was a shrunken braying donkey head. It was special in a way that only white-elephant gifts can be:
Much to Pepper’s chagrin, I stole it on my turn, but had it stolen later. Bummer.
This was Brian’s first time at our party (his family moved here a few months ago) and he wasn’t prepared for the return of the Cosmo Shower Curtain.
Jon had taken this gem home two years ago, and told me he’d literally been saving it on a shelf for these two years just so he could bring it back and get rid of it.
I loved that Kim and Kelly showed up dressed to the nines. He was in a full tuxedo, and she was in a glamorous cocktail dress.
They’d been at the annual black-tie Governor’s Ball, hosted by none other than the governor of Montana, and they left early to come to our party. Yeah, that’s how good it is. Take that, Governor Gianforte!