Wyndham Christmas Party

This was my first Christmas while working with Wyndham Resorts, the company I love and work for. While working with them, we have been able to finally have money in our savings, receive full benefits, and getting paid to have a lot of fun working. All good things. However, perhaps one of the coolest things I have enjoyed as a Wyndham employee is the Christmas party we had last Monday. The Christmas party was at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake (for those of you who don't know, Grand America Hotel = crazy expensive and awesome). The dinner was phenomenal. We had a light salad, stake so tender you could probably have cut it with a fork and juicy chicken. Then for dessert it was a fluffy chocolate cream thingy (don't let the description fool you, it was great). In fact, it was so good, they took my first plate and someone else came around and with no objection from me, I accepted a second serving. (I think it may have been intended for Tasha though because they didn't come again, until I asked one of the servers if they could get her a dessert). :)

Anyway, it was a really fun night (well, dinner was fun, and after all the awards were done, it was fun). The awards stuff actually took a really long time, but when it was done, they started a little dance and began giving away the cool door prizes. Before I go any further, when I say "little dance," I actually mean a lot of adults doing childish things in a drunken stupor. In all fairness, not everybody was drunk, but many people were either acting like they were, or they in fact were drunk. Second, when I say cool door prizes, I mean things like iPhones, iPods, several lotion things (not actually that cool), a PS3, a Wii, an xBox 360, and last but not least a 40" LCD Samsung TV.

We had lasted about 2 hours and then they started giving out the prizes, so we decided to wait a little longer and see what (not if) we would win. I was determined that I would probably win the Wii. Every raffle ticket that didn't have my name on it got me that much closer to the really good prizes. When somebody wasn't there, they would draw another name. It was torture. Every time they said the gift was the lotion or something I would cringe because that was not what I wanted to come home with. As the evening progressed (almost 10:00 now) my name still hadn't been called yet.

They got down to the Big 4, the Wii, PS3, xBox 360, and TV. I was sure that I would be called soon. Somebody won the Wii. No big deal though, I still had 3 other great prizes left. Next was the PS3. "Mark Merrill" they called over the microphone. In shock (despite my professed belief that I would indeed win one), I walked up and picked up my PS3. CRAZY! So, still in shock I held the PS3 while the other gifts were given. A young kid, probably 21 (barely) won the TV and walked up holding his hands on his head. He kept saying where am I going to put this, how am I going to get it home, etc... I half jokingly walked up to him and said, "I'll trade you straight up." He said, (swear word) yeah. I couldn't believe it, but I happily handed him the PS3 and took the 40" flat screen LCD Samsung TV.

It was awesome! I got out of there as quickly as I could (so the kid couldn't come to his senses that he had just given up the coolest gift there). He was actually really excited about his PS3, and I was pretty excited about the TV too. :)

So, I came home with a $1,200 TV from the party. Pretty dang cool. I have included a stock photo of the TV, but will later put up a picture of me next to my sweet door prize. Thanks for reading. Maybe if you read this, you can come watch a movie at our house. However, I don't know that anybody actually reads our blog, so maybe Tasha, you can watch a movie with me. :) Anybody else who reads this, let me know and I will gladly have you over to hang out and watch a movie with us. That is in itself my own great door prize for reading my blog. So, let me know if you want to redeem your gift.