The morning started with me washing and vacuuming the car and then heading to Lowes to get some things to repair the broken backdoor. After that Lori was taking the black shutters off the front of the house as one was broken and the others were on their last legs. I then drug the hose out of the garage as I had put it away for winter, to wash the house where the shutters once hung.
Finally at 6pm we were ready to head over to the Varone’s for a Christmas party. The Varone’s are the parents of the infamous Vinny, Ty’s friend from school. When we arrived we were surprised to learn that it was mostly a family party so it was special to be included. Everyone had to bring a wrapped ornament for some sort of exchange so we brought four.
A few hours into the party, Tracy (Vinny’s mom) explained how the ornament exchange was going to work. Everyone drew a number from a Santa hat and that was the order in which you would choose your ornament. Once you opened your ornament you had to show everyone else what it was as the next person could either choose to open a new, still unwrapped one, or steal one from someone else that had already opened one. If someone stole yours, you would then take that persons place and either open a new one or steal one too! The only rule was that you could only steal once. As you can imagine, this made for lots of fun as people were stealing ornaments left and right from other people, kids included.
One ornament in particular was really in demand. It was a cute life sized squirrel that was all glittery and made of wood. One girl about 12 years old opened it and really wanted to keep it. Sadly for her, it was stolen right away and then made its way around the room (from other people stealing it too) until it finally ended up in Ty’s hands. Ty had picked earlier (he had an early number) but being his dad, I stole his ornament from him so he could take my place and pick again having the benefit of seeing all the ones opened before. All this time the 12 year old girl who first opened the squirrel was fuming with a mix of anger and disappointment begging people to trade her back the squirrel for two ornaments as she also had her Mom’s. No one unfortunately wanted what she had and Ty ended up, after everyone had picked at the game was over, with the coveted squirrel. By now the girl was almost in tears, but also still seething with anger. I noticed as she followed Ty and Vinny out to the garage where they were going to get a soda. Turns out she cornered them there and said she wasn’t letting them out of the garage until Ty traded her for the squirrel. Her dad luckily followed her and made her let the boys out. Then the girl, went outside at sat by herself. We of course didn’t know any of this was going on at the time. Ty came back in and I asked “where’s the girl” and Ty just said outside. He then said he was going to go give the girl the squirrel. I said why and he said “cause she really wants it bad”. So I said ok if you want to, go ahead. He then went out to give it to her but I could tell he really wanted to keep it. Again I didn’t know all the drama that took place earlier. So off he went with Jagger and Vinny following him to give his coveted squirrel away. He offered it to her and she basically screamed at him and threw it on the ground! Ty then picked it up and came back in and told me the whole story. I was very proud of him for putting the girls feelings ahead of his own. The funniest part is right when we were leaving, Ty went up to Vinny’s Aunt’s boyfriend (who works on a ranch in Walden, small world) and asked if he wanted to trade the squirrel for his fox! Turns out Ty liked this cute little fox ornament even more than the squirrel! Mark (the boyfriend) was happy to trade as his girlfriend (Vinny’s 35 year old Aunt Laura) was one of the people who had the squirrel stolen from her earlier! So there you have it, Ty was very kind and generous and ended up with the fox he wanted all along!
Now to today. I’m making chili after church to get ready for the Bronco game. We’re supposed to get some good snow and it’s going to be cool for the next week. Lots to do but we can’t really Christmas shop until about the 20th when we get paid again. That’ll be an adventure! Hope everyone is well, take care and God Bless.