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Me with the money raised for charity...or a solo trip to Mexico?

This year marks the fifth Christmas we're spending in the beautiful place we're lucky enough to call home. And it's also the fifth year we've held a house party at Christmas.

When we first decided to hold a party, we had some concerns. We felt like our friends were completely random - we had friends from my office, friends from John's childhood, friends from my college, friends from the kids' schools and daycares, and so on. We worried that the party might be fun for US - we could see everyone we cared about all at once - but maybe would be awkward for others who only knew us.

John and I love games - so we decided to do a casino party!

However, we didn't think we could afford being "the bank." So instead of people playing with real money and us having to risk payouts, we decided to do the casino party as a fundraiser for the local newspaper's Fund for the Needy. The gambling works like this: everyone who wants to play in the casino pays $20, and gets chips worth $500. They play in the casino - we do craps, roulette, blackjack, and poker - as much as they want between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. At 11 p.m., we determine who the top three chip earners are. Those people share half of the buy-in money as prizes, and the other half is donated to the charity.

That way, people who like to gamble can enjoy these games (safely!), and those who don't can either play a little and feel like their money went towards the donation, or not play at all and just watch or visit with others. People who don't know anyone else would likely find it easy to strike up a conversation during a hand of blackjack, or could just stay quiet and amused by the screams from the craps table.

Well, every year the party has grown and grown - especially since we've always offered a kids' party at the same time. We hire excellent babysitters and provide kid-friendly snacks, drinks, games, and movies upstairs in our house, while the casino and hors d'oeuvres and drinks are downstairs. We originally decided to have the kids' party/babysitting because The Girl was just eight months when we first held the party, and I hadn't left her with anyone other than my in-laws then.

This year, our turnout was around 70 people - 20 kids, 50 adults. We hire our babysitters' friends to be the craps, roulette, and blackjack dealers - these high-school kids come dressed sharply with black ties and I've been asked numerous times about the company the kids work for. (They're drama students, so they love the chance to pretend to be casino dealers - and my friends are well-behaved enough that the dealers' parents don't mind the kids attending to an adult party.) We had 43 casino players, which meant $430 for the Fund for the Needy!

It's a ton of work to organize - food, drinks, moving furniture around, renting chairs, setting up the game tables (John actually built them himself), and decorating the house - not to mention the clean-up afterwards! But for those hours that I am in my own home, surrounded by many of my favorite people in the world, all I can think of is how completely and totally worth it it is. Long live the family house party!