Sunday, December 13, 2009

Christmas, um I mean, Holiday Partied Out.

It has been back to back Christmas/Holiday Parties this weekend.

Friday night, the singles at church had their party. It was really nice. Even though we all are dressed nicely for church on Sunday it was fun seeing everyone in cocktail attire. The food was GREAT too. It was catered by Macaroni Grill and they had a lot of food. For $25, this was the best value for a Christmas party ever.

My favorite series of photos from the evening: The Usual Suspects

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Below, me and the ladies from my small group (aka Bible Study) that attended. Everyone was so pretty. What an awesome bunch of ladies.

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Below, our social chairmen offering up prayer before we ate. They did an awesome job with decorating, planning...everything. Top notch.

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Saturday during the day, Santa visited the museum. It is so much fun watching the excitement and shyness of kids when they meet Santa. If you still believe, stop reading until after the pictures are posted.

Our Santa is the father of one of the museum staff members.

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This little girl was to afraid to sit on Santa's lap, this was the closest she would get. However, at lunch time, Santa was up in the Mess Hall having lunch with his "elf" and daughter and the little girl saw him. She had eyes as big as saucers and exclaimed "Santa! Santa!" We laughed, as she was probably shocked that Santa actually eats. She still wouldn't get near him. She did say good-bye when she left.

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I remember the one time we went to visit Santa...I think I was 5 or 6. The Santa in my hometown was this old Polish guy with a long white beard and long white hair. I seem to recall he may have even still had a bit of the Eastern European accent. Well, I was so excited to meet Santa...but a couple kids in front of us got scared and started to cry and that scared me and I think I threw a fit and never had my picture taken with Santa. I had it taken yesterday.

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This next group of ladies with Santa are future Marines. They are Poolees that came with their Recruiting Station for a visit to the museum. Poolees are high school students who are in the delayed entry program, meaning they have signed a contract to enlist in the Marine Corps when they graduate.

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This next bunch are Blue Star Moms. Blue Star Moms are mothers of service men and women. They all posed with Santa while holding photos of their children. They also wanted the two Marines manning the Toys for Tots drop off to be in the picture with them.

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Then the mad rush home to get ready for my company Christamas party that was held at the Udvar-Hazy Center, the BIG Air and Space museum out by Dulles Airport. There were 3400 people there. Holy cow...when I pulled into the parking lot and saw how full it was, I figured I'd NEVER find anyone. The museum is HUGE and it was PACKED. Amazingly, as I was walking in, one of my project mates was walking out. I did end up finding several of my project mates.

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Of course...I did walk around and take photos of the aircraft.

This is the SR-71 Blackbird.

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Light effects in the Blackbird's engine.

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The space shuttle.

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Some of the crowd.

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The Enola Gay.

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Some aircraft flown by and to be flown by Marines. The air craft in the front is the F-35 Lightening II.

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Below, some World War II aircraft.

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