Gary's Work Christmas Party

Oh, how I love the holiday season! It's been busy, fun, and I'm definitely enjoying the second pregnancy trimester over the first! :)

Gary's work had a beautiful Christmas party last Saturday on the 7th of December. It was located at the Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica and the party theme was Hollywood. It was right on the ocean and next to the Santa Monica pier. Everything was paid for and covered, and we definitely had a blast.

Gary in his navy suit before we left

Me in my navy gown before leaving. You can see my bump much better from the side ;) Hey, if you need a midsection slimming dress...

Us while at the hotel 

When we arrived at the hotel, we had valet parking already set up for us, so we went inside where I met his direct supervisor and a few other of his co-workers. We were there about 15-20 minutes before the actual dinner, so we hung out at the fancy bar area with them and chatted.

When we went into the banquet/dinner hall, I was able to meet the CEO and many of his employees and their spouses. We had an icebreaker game where we had to go around and ask questions to each other while filling out the answers on the paper sheets we were given. It was a nice way to break the ice for sure! We turned our papers in and sat down for dinner.

Dinner area and quartet (while everyone was still in the other room with the icebreaker game)

The dinner was delicious! Not only did we have a string quartet accompany us during it with Hollywood themed music, it was a four-course meal (we chose our foods a week prior to this). I got the Parmesan Risotto with wild mushroom sauce while Gary had the wild mushroom Agnolotti, herbs, and crumbled goat cheese (I had to Google some of the fancy menu items). After our appetizer, the CEO pulled out a random paper from our game earlier and read some of the answers- then gave a prize to the person's paper he pulled out.

For the salad, I had a Caesar salad with romaine, croutons, and anchovy dressing (it was much better than it sounds), while Gary had the mozzarella di Buffa (buffalo mozzarella) with cherry tomatoes and pesto.

After the salad, the CEO once again stood up, told us to look under our name tags (we had assigned seating), and see what color we had on them. He picked a color (we'll say blue), and the game was a trivia game. He'd ask a Hollywood related trivia question, and the first person who had a blue and raised their hand had an opportunity to answer. If they answered correctly, they received a blue-ray copy of the movie or an option of different movies from the actor or actress who was the correct answer. He did a few colors, then we went on with our main meal.

For the main course, I had Polenta with Portobello mushrooms, grilled asparagus, roasted peppers, and yellow squash. It was delicious! Seriously, I LOVE roasted vegetables and the meal was spot on. Everyone else at the table, including Gary, had lobster tail and filet Mignon, mashed potatoes, and french green beans. Salmon was another dinner option, but the lobster seemed the most popular.

After the main course, the color trivia game was finished. There was some extra blue-ray DVDs leftover, so he randomly drew a few numbers (our name tags also had numbers on them), and gave those away. Gary's number was chosen, so he picked Avatar since neither of us had seen it. Yay for a prize!

Then we enjoyed dessert, where we both had the warm chocolate truffle cake with hazelnut Gelato and chocolate sauce. I haven't really been craving chocolate since being pregnant, but it was yum! The other option was fruit cobbler and I'm not a cobbler fan, though it looked pretty delicious too.

After dessert, each employee was handed an envelope. Inside, there was a picture of three things- a movie, a famous actor, and a famous actress. Then there was an event kind of like the academy awards, where the option of "best movie", "best effects", "best actor", "best actress", etc was drawn. The drawing was random, so if anyone on your pictures was drawn, you'd win a gift to unwrap. Gary and I unfortunately weren't winners, but there were some amazing prizes given away- including a Samsung Smart TV, Xbox 360, a high def sound system, a Kindle Fire, a tablet (I think it was the Microsoft Surface or something, but I could be wrong), gift certificates, and other awesome things. Pretty neat! We were pretty excited to have a new movie though, which we enjoyed watching the next night.

Anyway, we had a blast! Everyone was SO friendly and kind and I just love his co-workers! They were also giving out free candy, so we filled a couple of candy bags. Yum! 

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