a very SFAMily holiday

along with all of the other activities, last weekend also brought the annual holiday hoorah with the SFAMily. as we do every year, we'd drawn names for a secret santa gift exchange using elfster. and as i do every year, i'd procrastinated until the very last minute before buying my gift for my pick - weatherjen. i thought it was pretty funny considering she'd been the unfortunate one to draw my name last year, and i loved that she'd made it so easy for me with her amazon wish list. that's awesome for a lazy ass like me.

although my supreme laziness didn't keep me from making up little boxes of goodies to hand out to these fabulous ladies. i rarely show up empty-handed, and this gathering was no exception. i decided to make some of those red velvet whoopie pies i'd tried this summer, and as a nod to the season, i sprinkled some festive decorations on the batter before popping them into the oven.

since my cake/candy supply store was out of the perfect little 4" boxes i'd used for the whoopie pies before, i decided to throw some snickerdoodle cookies in to fill up the boxes i ended up with. they were slightly larger and two whoopie pies looked sad and lonely, nestled in the tissue paper that helped to take up some space.

as with the boxes for the hub's office, i decorated these with a bit of colorful paper and coordinating ribbon.

as always, we had a great time - full of laughter, stories, and yummy food. and there was some wonderful news, too - our friend r revealed that she's with child. as she said it, there was a chorus of "awww!"s and "yay!!"s all around the table and it was such a fun moment. someone remarked "well, we were due for another baby, it's been a while!" and r, always fast on her feet, replied with "i'm happy to fill the void." haha! i love her.

i'm not particularly perceptive or psychic or anything like that, but for some reason when she walked in the room, i took one look at her and "OMG, she's pregnant!" popped in my head. i never get that with anyone else, so it was kind of crazy. or i'm crazy. i don't know.

when it was time for our gift exchange, i ended up going first and handed weatherjen her gift with a smile. i'd bought her a book and CD off of her wish list, and i was happy to see that she was excited when she opened them.

and then she said "you're gonna laugh when you see who i picked," turned, and handed me a prettily wrapped gift. ha! poor thing, she got stuck with me two years in a row. at least i'm easy to buy for, since i threw some ideas onto a wish list of my own. and i was stoked to find this underneath the wrapping paper:

it was great to see my friends. we haven't really seen each other a whole lot this year, which is kind of sad. i'm hopeful that 2010 will bring us together more often. and before we left, we gathered for a group pic in front of a christmas tree (this is from the monkey, since my picture came out a little fuzzy):

the dude who took the picture snapped a couple off, and while this one is a bit fuzzy, i had to post it because the monkey added her own special touches to it:

we snickered when a guy walked by and said "so this is where all the hot chicks are!" creeper.
but he was right, yes? heh.