Southwest Airlines Omaha Christmas Party 2009

Last night I attended our Southwest Airlines, Omaha Station, Christmas party. I actually had a hand in organizing the event. We decided to go back to the same place as last year. The Holiday Inn Ameristar. We cut down on the expense of employees gifts this year, but everyone still received something. Our meal was delicious consisting of the same menu as last year.

We had our Operations Supervisor organize our evenings entertainment. He booked Arthur Fratelli. He was hilarious! He did some magic tricks involving some of our own employees, he had many jokes and stories to tell, and also did some juggling in between the tricks. I actually assisted him briefly, using my cell phone. He asked 3 different questions of our group and had 3 random people write down answers in the form of numbers on a pad of paper. For example, he wondered how much money we all thought he made doing his job. Then, he gave me the pad of paper and I was to use the calculator function on my cell phone to add these 3 numbers together. Once I did, he had me say out loud what the total of these 3 numbers was. My answer was 2,942. He then proceeded to untuck his shirt from his pants! I asked if I could switch from calculator to camera on my phone! (hee hee!) He said, "No, very funny!" with a look of raised eyebrows that seemed to send me a message of "Behave!". Then after he untucked the outer garment, he opened it to reveal an inside t-shirt that had the numbers 2,942! OK, I was impressed! He had no idea what numbers were going to be written down! It matched my total on my calculator! Everyone loved it! He did numerous other tricks as well that involved the assistance of someone from our group.

Here I am posing with the funny man, Arthur Fratelli.

I also walked around to take random pictures of employees at their tables or mingling with others throughout the night.

It isn't hard to figure out who the strong man is here!

Dennis, center, retired from SWA during the last year. He came for our party. It was fun to see him and his wife again!

Juggling golf balls.....

Juggling an apple and a head of lettuce. He had them each take a bite out of one or the other while continuing to juggle the other items. The apple had dropped to the floor so he ripped the lettuce into smaller sections. He hoped they didn't have to bite on the item that was already eaten!

Lindsay, celebrating her birthday the same day as our party, was one of his assistants.

The evening was very fun. We laughed a lot at Arthur Fratelli. I had many more pictures but just couldn't put them all in this post. Once the entertainment was over, we handed out gifts to the employees and people then went their own direction. Some went to the casino to try their luck and some went home. All in all, another successful holiday party.