Christmas

Ok, who brought the edible body chocolate…the question followed Connie’s surprise at opening the gift during the White Elephant gift exchange.  We had the annual Oceanic Ventures holiday party at Stan and Stephanie Watowich’s home.  Little did they know what they were in for during this year’s party. 
The evening started with an opportunity to see how Stephanie’s oven worked – since my died just as I was putting in the bread and lasagna.   Ann made a quick phone call to Stephanie asking simply, how is your oven working – followed by great, would you set it to four hundred degrees and Eric and I will be over 30 minutes earlier.”  Thank goodness they had working appliances or Mike’s Eggplant Lasagna would have had to be stretched even further.
While the dinner was cooking our official Oceanic Ventures Mixologist, Chuck, was blending Scrapinos (1/4 cup vodka, ¼ cup Prosecco, 1 cup lemon sorbet, garnished with a lemon – combine the vodka and sorbet in a blender, put in a champagne glass and top with the Proseco)   while the appetizers including some extra fine cheeses were being served to the attendees.
As usual everyone was there (ok, Wade was in Mexico, Pam was in Dallas, and Ed was in Ohio) and the talents of the staff and/or their spouses or significant others was apparent in the food served.
The highlight of the evening was the White Elephant or Gift Exchange.  As the game progressed, the most popular items were the Lava Lamp and the Rum.  Mathew, age 8, was desperate to get rid of the coffee and “butt crack” coffee mug.  Stan finally took pity on him and exchanged an iTune download gift card with him.  Of course the other gift traded a few times was the edible chocolate and licorice laces.  No one would admit bringing them but the single guy, Ashton, ended up with them.  Hmmmm.
As many of you know, the staff works hard all year and this is one of our ways to say thank you to them for all of their hard work and support.  They are a wonderful bunch of people and I am glad to get to work with all of them during the year. 
Go team go!  Let’s have fun in 2008!