Annual Nurse/Caregiver Cookie Exchange Party

We all enjoyed our annual cookie exchange party today--it was definitely fun and a success!  Everyone came that RSVP'd so there were eleven of us plus the boys so we definitely had a full house.

Everyone brought a gift for the Milton Family Community Center.  See...!  Gene will bring them over sometime this week.  I'm sure many kids will have smiles on their faces this Christmas morning unwrapping some of these cool gifts!

We had some good munchies:  Christmas Punch (cranberry juice, lemonade andginger ale), crackers, cheese and pepperoni, spanakopita, and Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and red and green sugar.

Of course we also had M&Ms to eat as well as use as Bingo markers in our Christmas Bingo games.  Andrea won the TWO games of Bingo! 

Then we did our cookie exchange.  There's always a little bit of confusion but we all end up with beautiful containers of cookies.  Meghan made SnickerDoodles with Rolos in the middle.  Nancy L make log cookies with chocolate and almonds.  Nancy H made her festive spritz cookies.  Aunt Chris made some sugar cookies with sprinkles, but didn't make quite enough so she picked up some ginger bread men from Madeline's to make up the difference :)   Julia made SnickerDoodles.  Julia C made star sugar cookies that were decorated beautifully.  Andrea made the all time favorite peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss.  I made all-spice thumb print cookies with raspberry in the center.  Lauren made Andes Mint Chocolate chip cookies.  Julie made white chocolate macadamia nut cookies.   Staci made peanut butter cup truffles. 

Punch, cheese, crackers and pepperoni, cupcakes and pineapple chunks

Special treat table

Colin with eyes squeezed shut and Nurse Julie

Santa Casey

Indulging in some yummy food.

We still had time to play the memory tray game.  I tried to change it up a little bit and everyone got mad at me.  After I had them stare at the items on the tray (there were about 16) I tried to have everyone sing a round of Jingle Bells in an attempt to distract them a bit and make it harder to remember, but most everyone bailed and started writing anyway!  Next year I won't give them their pencils and paper until I'm totally ready for them to start, so pffft on them!

Guess who won the tray game??  Yes, Julia O'Neill.  She's won every year that we've done this game.   Nine was the average items that were remembered with 6 being the lowest.  I won't rat out that person publically :).  Julia won by remembering 12 items!

A few people had to leave while some of us stayed and chatted.

Meghan, our 'old' night nurse stayed awhile and spent some quality time with the boys and I know they appreciated that. 

It was good to have everyone together, although we were minus a few.  It's pretty unusual for us to be able to sit and enjoy each others company; we have a good group of people that take care of the boys!

All the while, though, I had Connie and Justin on my mind.  Daniel, too, of course, although I know he's in a safe, happy place.  It's just very hard to go on with life and do enjoyable things when people you care about very much are hurting so badly.