We each had several gifts to give her, so I had made up trivia questions for Julie in 5 different categories and the poor girl had to correctly answer them in order to earn (Monopoly) money with which to buy them! Here we are in the thick of things:
You can see most of the 9 gifts lined up along the mantle, with prices ranging from $1 to $8 (plus one mystery price of $??), as well as the cardboard game board with its colour-coded trivia cards set out on it on the table between Julie and I. The three of us spent most of the evening there in our family room, engaged in this silly and trivial pursuit, with a lovely wood fire blazing in the background.
Leading up to the final 2 gifts, Julie picked up a toy ball for her dog, Cooper; a couple of Lois Lane comics (after she'd admired some that I'd gotten from Vicki for Christmas last year); a pair of strap-on lights for our night walking (one for her, one for Cooper) to go with the one she'd given me for Christmas; two movies and a TV show on DVD; and a behind-the-scenes book about 42-Up.
The second-last present was a card that said "ADMIT ONE to the Comic Room", leading Julie to believe that she was perhaps going to have her pick of any treasure in my collection (fat chance!!!). Instead, once we got down there, the following photo collage was awaiting her, commemorating many of the good times the three of us have had together over the past six months:
Eventually, after Julie answered the final question in the game, it was time for her to count her remaining cash and discover if she had enough to cover the mystery price on the last gift. She had quite a wad by that time - we think she got 47 of the 60 questions right on her own and answered another half dozen or so correctly with the clues that the game allowed her to procure - but then was disgusted to learn that the price on the last item was simply "Complete the game to win me!" You can see what was in the big package (as well as the birthday cake) in the shot below, although it's not featured as prominently as it should be: it's the beautiful quilt resting on her lap, courtesy of Vicki!
Prior to creating it, Vicki had even made an uncharacteristic trip to Julie's house with me back in January so that she could ostensibly visit with Finley, the cat, while Finley's mistress and I went for our walk... all so that Vicki could surreptitiously compare various swatches of material to Julie's decor. Vicki then assembled 147 squares of carefully selected flannel material into the finished product over the course of the next several weeks. All of that hard work paid off when the birthday girl declared just how much she loved getting her first ever home-made quilt, at the ripe old age of [information redacted for personal safety reasons].
After all of that was over and done with, we retired to the front room to watch the first episode of The Shield Season One (a favourite show of Julie's which she thought Vicki and I would like) and then sat up talking for hours afterward, as we usually do. It was another in a long line of great nights.
Strangely, though, the last two times Julie has come over for a visit, something has gone wrong around here! On New Year's Eve, it was a huge icicle crashing down and breaking one of the windows in our garage. On this past Saturday, just hours before the guest of honour arrived for her party, our (approximately 1 year old) dish washer decided to go on the fritz. Less than 48 hours after that, Vicki slipped on black ice going to the garage, and is now dealing with a serious injury to her shoulder. Considering how much fun we have with this particular friend, it's almost like the universe is trying to balance things out by giving us offsetting headaches to deal with each time we host her! That's not very nice, if you ask me.
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