Christmas Party

We had our department Christmas party tonight. In previous years, it's been at various restaurants and it's been at people's homes. This year it was held in the party room of The Broadway, a high-rise building here in San Antonio. My long-time office mate, Tripp, lives in the building with his family. He put the party together, reserved the room, ordered food (heavy hors d'oeuvres), etc. The room was beautiful and it is always nice to see my co-workers all dressed up in "regular" clothes instead of scrubs.

For the first time ever, I also got to see where Tripp lives. Patrick and I got a personal tour of their condo from Tripp and his wife Chaney. They bought 2 two-bedroom condos and put them together. Their furnishings and decor were model-home quality and their views from each room were absolutely fantastic, especially this time of year. The University of the Incarnate Word is right across the street and all of their trees are lit up with colorful Christmas lights. The Christmas tree in this picture was almost completely covered in nutcracker ornaments. I told Patrick, "See--you can never have too many ornaments!" He always tells me that we have too many ornaments. Of course, I had to get a picture in front of their fabulous tree.

Tripp is very crafty. When I was asked to donate a gift basket that can be auctioned off, I had no idea what to do. He gave me ideas about getting some things while I was in Italy a couple of weeks ago. In the end, I didn't even get any souvenirs for myself in Italy, so I brought nothing back to put in a gift basket. Tripp did it all for me. The theme was "Melanie Was in Italy". I gave him money, and he bought everything, including the packaging--biscotti, coffee, mugs with pictures of Italian landmarks. He did a great job!

The one thing I was unhappy about was that none of the residents or Anesthesia techs that I work with were at the party. The Residency Director last year decided to have his own party and invite only the residents. This year was the same. It was always nice to see them in "regular" clothes too, and to meet their spouses, but I guess graduation will be the only time we can do that now. It's a great deal for the residents because they don't have to pay anything for their party. Because of the separation of the residents, the Anesthesia techs were also left off the list. I'm not exactly sure how that came about, but I know several of the Anesthesia techs and they usually came to every party, whether it was a retirement party, promotion party, or holiday party. They are fun to be around, and I'm hoping they'll be included next year.

I'm going to end this post with a little of "real life" for me on this eleventh day of December. Every year, Eric's school has a Story Jam where parents and other adults read stories to groups of them. Patrick has done it in the past, but it didn't work out this year. They kids get to wear pajamas to school, and Eric decided to wear one of his new Minion pajamas. His legs have been growing, because his all of his pants (now that it's cooler and he wears them) are too short, so I've bought him some pants and pajamas lately. Anyway, Patrick was good to me and took a picture of Eric with his pajamas on, just after he got off the school bus.

What I noticed first about this picture is that Eric's face is getting more "grown up". He is not a "little boy" anymore. He will always still be "Mama's baby", though, even when he is (hopefully) bigger than me! That's what I've told his older brothers and sister, too!

Wait, I have one more story. Today, I posted on Facebook that a couple of the young enlisted guys I work with were sitting near me in the lunch room. They both said something about how they were both only one year old when Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out in 1997. I said that made me feel old. Anthony replied in the comments, "Everyone can see you stopped again at 29, Mama. It's (Papa) that's the old one." I replied back to him that he was a sweetie. One of my Facebook friends replied also and said, "You have an awesome son!" :)