1. THROW A BIG ASS HOUSE PARTY

I admit, this one's kiiiiind of a cop out.  House parties are not new to me.  Seaner and I have been known to throw some awesome parties.  We think they're awesome, anyways, because our family & friends are awesome.

A few cases in point:

The house re-warming of 2010 started it all.  It was a re-warming because I had just moved back to Edmonton from Calgary and shacked up with Sean, who had lived in our condo for a couple of years already, so we couldn't exactly call it a straight-up housewarming.  Somehow we all found ourselves wearing 3D movie glasses with the lenses taken out, and I nervously asked everyone to step away from the ledge when some of us wound up on the roof.

... and my baby sister A had a "nap" on the couch with her glasses on...

Ok, so another birthday party.  I was turning 27 - oh to be 27 again! - and it seemed like a good excuse to have a party.  I wore the infamous Freddie Mercury pants - glorious, very high-waisted red lamé pants.  They are so-called because they once served as part of a Halloween costume (Freddie Mercury is my favourite), but I sincerely love them.  Plus, I gotsta have a party outfit, k?  You can kinda seem them here:

Sean's surprise 30th.  This was last year, and the "house" part of the house party wasn't ours (thanks C+Y!), but it was only more awesome because of that.  I worked for weeks and weeks secretly plotting, making party hats with Sean's face on them, making fake beards for everyone... and then of course we meticulously planned to execute the surprise, and somehow it worked.  I think the birthday boy was pretty happy with the whole thing!

There were other house parties too, but some were a little more low key, and some I wasn't even invited to (Sean's Extremely Sexist and Exclusive Gentlemen's Festive Scotch & Bacon Soirée, for example).  There are also all the amazing parties that we didn't host, but were just lucky enough to attend (the KT's Christmas parties, the great shindigs at C+Y's, to name just a few).

So about the party that I'm actually supposed to be writing about in this entry.  It was called 29 & Feelin' Fine.  The informal tagline was "because, I'm 29, and I'll be damned if I'm not feelin' fine". I had a cheesy banner:

It was a great party.  I received all kinds of lovely little gifties.  Tied for the most glorious were from each of my two besties, and both were received early enough in the night to fully enjoy them without a full house: an amazing Angry Birds game (that I turned out not to be very good at) and this weird family-heirloom-cum-birthday-present/keepsake/now-permanent-fixture-on-my-mantle figurine:

Ok, well, it really should be a three-way tie, because the modern, edgy pencil box I received from my improv sister Danielle cannot be overlooked:

The party was great - there were lots of people, lots of booze, lots of snacks, an amazing cake (thanks K!) and obviously a ton of friendship and memories.  THERE WAS EVEN A BALLOON DROP.  I kinda fucked up and didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked, but hey, I was busy mingling in my party outfit, ok?!  But here's what we've got:

The always effervescent Mr. Hockin servin' up some Sean's Choice mini pizzas with Mrs. KT:

The food that gave me what I can only describe as a "sugar hangover":

Some hooligans:

A blurry picture of my man givin' me some love in my party outfit at the end of the night (or early in the morning?):

Why did I include a house party on the list, especially given our fine pedigree of parties past?  In all honesty, I needed a quick win to get this damn list started, and I was fairly confident it wouldn't be a shitty party.  And of course, who doesn't like a party?!

But probably more than anything, I wanted to include this party on the list because it's a great memory of this year, and really, it's representative of the last few years of my twenties.  See, I somehow lucked out and have an incredible group of friends, like really incredible.  So many of my friends I've known for at least half my life, and so many others have been brought into my life through my old friends... and of course through Sean I've inherited a whole other incredible "side" of my friend family.  And it's just that:  all of them feel like an extended family.

As we get older and all of our lives become more complicated (or at least more busy, as babies are always in the near future - if they haven't started to make their appearance yet), I don't ever want to lose this bond.  In other words, I don't want the house parties to stop - but maybe they'll just start to include a room full of carseats, or a basement full of little kids having their own parties, or a bitch-session of our awful teenagers...

So that's it - item #1 done!!  Until the next...

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