last Christmas post

After all, it's New Years Eve! Today's also Jeff's (Lindsay's husband) birthday. He's pretty old, I think 32 maybe. Happy birthday! Anyway, it's about time I stopped writing about Christmas. I left work early today, partially to finish cleaning and getting ready for tonight, but mostly just because I wanted to. I'm also taking tomorrow off, but have to go back Friday. I was expecting the other girl to be back at work today, but she called this morning and asked if it was ok if she took a couple extra days off because she and her fiance just broke up. I said sure. Anyway, Mercedes and Ilya are coming over tonight, we're going to have some good food, a bunch of alcohol, and a bonfire. Then we're making french onion soup for tomorrow, using our beef bones to make the stock. I'm excited.

Back to Christmas. I never got my mom's pictures before they left, which sucks, because I didn't take any pictures on Christmas Eve and I know there were a few good ones. Mom, please email me those. Or send a cd or something. Anyway, here's a good one of the cookies that Katie decorated:

I like this one, it's how we spent several evenings: in front of a bonfire.

Christmas night, Maureene made lumpia, which were like eggrolls, using the leftover pork from dinner. She had a bit of help rolling them, while everyone else was in the picture above.

Then she fried them the next morning, and we had a delicious breakfast. We took the rest with us shooting and had a delicious lunch as well.

I wanted to post a video of us shooting, but I can't seem to get them to work on my computer, so I can't find a good one. So instead here's a picture of my dad, covered in cabbages:

And that's all I have the patience for. Have a happy new year!

guns and fire

Now for the less civilized side of Christmas: shooting things and burning things! We all went out shooting the day after Christmas, there was a total of 9 people, 7 guns, 2 boxes of skeet, and 20 cabbages. We also brought some wood and targets, set it all up and went to town.

After awhile, we started getting lazy.

And totally gangster.

Then we had our last hurrah, all 7 guns going at once. It was bad ass.

We had fires on a couple of nights. Mike showed off his fire building skills.

And of course we were drinking, so of course we started fire surfing.



Then Alfred decided he would try and lie down on the fire. It didn't go so well.

Luckily he didn't get hurt, although he was disappointed.

good clean Christmas fun

First things first: a Christmas day post! We started out nice and early (well, most of us did, anyway) to get cracking on some food. I also made some cinnamon rolls for breakfast, which we had with mimosas. Then we hit the presents! I played Santa, but look too hideous in all the pictures to post them. We made a mess. We were careful to cover as much of the floor as possible.

Some Wii was played, since Katie had just received Mario Kart. Then we had to get started on the hard core cooking. Here's Alfred working on the chicken. The smoker with the pork shoulders is in the background.

We also had macaroni and cheese, baked beans, buttermilk biscuits, turnip and mustard greens, and cole slaw. All from scratch, of course. With apple pie, cookies, and chocolate birthday cake for dessert. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

While we were working on food, everyone else took part in a gingerbread house competition. I made it extra challenging by making the gingerbread pieces while drunk, so they didn't quite fit together. Surprise! But that made it fun. I think.

Ilya and Mercedes won for most decorated house (unfortunately all the M&M's caved one side of the roof in at first, but they rebuilt):


My parents and Katie won for most creative use of materials (theirs collapsed, so they remade it as a FEMA shelter after a hurricane):


Max, Robyn, and Ellery won for best plan (they cut their pieces to fit together better before construction):


And Mike and Maureene won for best overall. Theirs didn't collapse at all, even though they did use a few toothpicks to help it stay together until all the frosting dried. They also did a lot of decoration. Check out their gingerbread people in the second picture:



Then we ate, opened more presents, and sang to Emily. Then we drank again. All in all, a pretty great Christmas.

so quiet

There's no bonfire going. No one's playing the Wii. I'm sober. All of these facts add up to one thing: everyone's gone. Maureene left on Friday, Mike left Saturday, and Katie and my parents left this morning. It's all quiet and kind of lonely now. Plus we went to the gym today and I've only had a couple of cookies tonight, we've got lots of laundry to fold, and I have to go back to work tomorrow. What a depressing Sunday. But hey, at least I have some nice pictures to look at.

I took this Christmas morning with our better camera, once Alfred got up and I could go in our room without feeling guilty. I have lots to go through, so come back tomorrow and look at some!

Merry Christmas! and happy birthday Emily

Emily and Jesus share a birthday. Also, I don't seem to have any recent pictures of her (or of Jesus, actually) probably because she's away at school most of the time and not around when we are. Well, happy birthday to her anyway!

We (Alfred, Katie and I) were up until about 2:30 last night getting things ready. We got home from Christmas Eve dinner (hosted by Alfred's parents) at about midnight and then had to get the pork into the smoker, the beans into the oven, and the cinnamon rolls for this morning made and into a pan to rise in the fridge overnight. And yet here I am, blogging at 8:19am. I'm a champ.

I wanted to take a picture of our tree with all the gifts underneath, but our camera is upstairs in my purse and I don't want to go back in our room and wake Alfred up, so I used our old camera. Now I remember why we got a new one, this one kind of takes crappy pictures.

The funniest part was when I went to upload the pictures onto the computer. There's a whole bunch of other pictures I never took off of the camera! Such as this gem, which I assume was from my birthday last year.

I'm guessing my birthday because the other pictures on it were from when I went to visit Mike after he got shot.

I've got some nice close ups of his wound too, but that's not very Christmassy.

So I hope everyone has a great day, I know we will! Merry Christmas!

by the numbers

6 days until I have to go back to work
3 gingerbread houses baked
2 batches of gingerbread dough prepared
1 wrestling match / near heart attack

1 power hour completed

and a partridge in a pear tree

a little Christmas quiz thingie

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? wrapping paper. It's so much more satisfying to rip open wrapping paper than to open a gift bag

2. Real tree or Artificial? definitely real. I don't think I could ever handle a fake tree. It's just so wrong

3. When do you put up the tree? generally about 2 weeks before Christmas, usually just after my birthday

4. When do you take the tree down? sometime after New Years

5. Do you like eggnog? yup

6. Favorite gift received as a child? I'm sure I got a lot of great gifts that I was super pumped about, but I can't think of a favorite right now

7. Hardest person to buy for? Max or Robyn

8. Easiest person(s) to buy for? my dad or Katie

9. Do you have a nativity scene? nope

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? mail. I didn't know you were allowed to email Christmas cards. Don't they have to be mailed to be counted as cards?

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? huh. I obviously don't have a very good memory tonight

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? either A Christmas Story or Christmas Vacation. I'd say it's pretty even, actually

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? well I try to keep track of ideas I have during the year and buy things when I see them, but we generally end up buying gifts between Thanksgiving and Christmas

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? hee hee... yes

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? cookies!

16. Lights on the tree? They're multi colored, they actually used to my grandma's

17. Favorite Christmas song? the Chipmunks' Christmas song. I set it as my ring tone just yesterday! Alfred's favorite is Santa Baby, guess what his ring tone is?

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? we alternate. Last year it was Thanksgiving here, Christmas in NY. This year we were in NY for Thanksgiving and will be home for Christmas. When we're down here we do Christmas Eve at Max and Robyn's house, and they come to our house for Christmas day.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? of course!

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? an angel

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning

22. Most annoying thing about this time of the year? all the extra traffic

23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I decided this year I like glass ornaments best

24. Plans for Christmas dinner? Our tradition now for Christmas at our house is a big BBQ dinner.

25. What do you want for Christmas this year? I don't really have anything specific that I want this year

cookies galore

My parents are here! They got in yesterday afternoon, we went out to eat and then headed to a shopping center and played some chess. Because that's what you assume you would do at a shopping center: play chess. My dad won.

Today we spent aaaaaaalll day making cookies! To be more specific, my mom and I made cookies while Alfred watched and drank and my dad played a hunting game on their Wii. We made those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss in the middle, almond cookies with almond frosting, peanut butter oatmeal M&M cookies, peppermint sugar cookies (I started making them in the shape of candy canes but didn't like how they were turning out, so I made the rest as pinwheels and didn't like those either, oh well), cut out sugar cookies, and cut out anise cookies.

We frosted all of the cut outs and decorated the anise ones.

Katie's going to decorate the sugar cut outs when she gets down here. As we learned when making our Easter cookies last year, she's much better at piping than I am.

Now we're *watching* (thank you, mom and Ro) Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Interesting choice of movies to watch with my parents, yes. It's good so far. They're dropping quite a few f-bombs.

I need a Christmas ring tone

Sorry I slacked yesterday. I was busy. Every day I've had a list of things to accomplish before going to bed, and every night so far I've been pretty successful. We're almost ready for Christmas. The house is ready for all of our guests, we have almost all of our gifts bought and wrapped (they're all sitting under the tree right now, it's so damn precious), I mailed a package off to MN with their gifts, our cards went out this week, and we have our Christmas menu all set. I just have a few little things left to buy, and we have to buy most of the food for Christmas day. So not much left, really. We've gotten a lot done. I was going to make some cookie dough tonight to have it ready to bake this weekend, but then we decided it would be more fun to do it with my family here. You know, bonding and stuff. Really, my mom and I will make cookies while my dad fishes and Alfred is busy on his computer or something. But it will be bonding in our own way.

I feel like Christmas always sort of sneaks up on me. I look forward to my birthday, and then when that's over I have a few more days of birthday celebration time, of course, and then suddenly Christmas is a week away. Cards and packages are what always get me, because they stop guaranteeing the delivery date and make you all nervous that your stuff won't get where it's going on time.

I'm excited to have a few days off of work, but at home. We might go to Universal for a day while everyone's here, which will be fun. We haven't been to a theme park at all since I've gone back to the museum, if you can believe it. I barely can. Especially considering how much Ilya loves going. Ok time's up, got to clean up the wrapping paper in the living room and then go to bed!

I found a dog

Today, just as I was coming out of the new museum with a couple of teachers that I was showing around, this dog came out of nowhere and started trotting around with us. She was white with some tan spots, and had a pink flowered collar, which made me guess that she was a she. She was cute, and not all jumpy and annoying, which was good. She sort of wandered around, sniffing things and going up to people, and I forgot about her, since there are a few people that walk their dogs without leashes around the museum. Well, a few minutes later she wandered into the store. There's a big hole in the screen in the bottom of the store door, so she just walked right on in. Kara (the new girl) started freaking out a bit, because she's sort of afraid of dogs, and started trying to shoo the dog out. I went outside and filled a little bucket with some water, then took it outside to the dog. By then the stupid thing was standing smack dab in the middle of the street, watching the cars drive around and try to avoid hitting her. So I went and grabbed her collar and pulled her out of the street and over to the water, which she seemed to appreciate. I found a tag on her collar with a phone number to a pet tracking service, wrote it and what I assumed was her ID number down, and went into the store to call. While I was on the phone the dog took off again, so I had Kara get on the phone and I went after the dog, who by now had found the group who was eating lunch at our picnic tables. I grabbed her collar again and brought her into the museum, then had the genius idea to tie a piece of twine around her collar so I had a leash for her.

So, I had a dog. I named her Jingles. We walked around the museum a bit, took some trash out to the dumpster, sniffed some stuff. After the group left we sat at the picnic tables, had some water, watched the world go by. Just chillin. Then I got kind of bored, Jingles was just lying on the ground and not playing with me anymore, so I closed her into the picnic area and went outside. Of course, right then her owner showed up, so I took her out to the dog, whose name turned out to be Sassy. I liked Jingles better personally, but whatever. Then her owner told me that this was the third time TODAY that the dog had escaped! I mean ok, it happens, but 3 times by 12:30 in the afternoon? How the hell does she get anything done at work if she's always having to go pick up her damn dog? Plus the lady at the pet tracking place said the dog had been reported found last night. Seems kind of irresponsible, if you ask me, but nobody did, so never mind. :)

catching up

First, thank you all for calling/emailing/texting on my birthday. I had a great day, Alfred made me a delicious breakfast (burritos with egg and sweet potato), I had nothing but junk food all day at work (2 kinds of brownies and a cake), and then we had a fantastic dinner. If anyone still needs a gift idea for me for Christmas (or my birthday, as some of my siblings have yet to get me anything) a gift certificate to Barbara Jean's would be awesome. Then on our way out, we passed a real estate place - check out the lamp in their window!

Friday was super busy at work, and we pretty much just crashed that evening. I think that was the night we had liver for dinner, which was not quite as good as we had hoped it would be. Saturday we spent with Alfred's family and Ilya and Mercedes for my birthday. We had fried green tomatoes, mac and cheese, tomato pudding, crab cakes, and 2 types of cake (both baked by Mercedes, with help, apparently, from Ilya). It was all fantastic and I almost exploded afterwards. Seriously, my stomach almost burst. It was painful. But oh so tasty.

Yesterday we went into preparation mode for next week, cleaning and getting things ready. Katie's former abode took quite some work, but Mom, your holiday suite is now ready for occupation. We also put up and decorated our Christmas tree! We bought it Saturday morning (for only $30!) and spent all last night decorating. It's such a cute little tree. I'm all sorts of fired up for Christmas this year!

Tonight after work I did a little shopping, then came home and whipped up some meatloaf and mashed turnips (like mashed potatoes but healthier) for dinner. We're eating it right now, and it is rather delicious. After this we have some laundry to fold, and we got our Christmas cards today so we probably need to start addressing envelopes. Fun times!

happy birthday Katherine! and me!

It's the big day! I have my ring tones all set, for my phone and for my emails and text messages. I got to sleep in, I took this morning off of exercising so I could sleep an extra hour. Alfred's making me breakfast and taking me out to dinner tonight, and I've got presents and cards to open before I go to work. I love my birthday! I hope I never come to hate it. I don't understand how people don't like their birthdays. I mean, it's a day everyone gets to celebrate me. How can anyone not like that? And it just so happens Katherine was born on the same day, although 2 years later. She's such a young'un. I hope you have a good day today too, Katherine - happy birthday!

So, now that you've read this, you can go ahead and call me and wish me a happy birthday. You don't need to leave a comment here, too, but if you want to, I won't stop you. You could text or email me too so I could hear both of my special birthday ringtones, but that's not necessary either, really. I'm not picky. Actually if you leave a comment here I'll get an email about it, which will let me hear that ringtone, so really, you can go for either a comment or a text/email, both are not needed. And of course, as long as you call, that's plenty. :)

it's what's for dinner

(I'll warn you now, there may be a few "that's what she said" moments in this post. Enjoy.)

Last week we got our 1/4 cow worth of meat delivered. It's from the same place we got our lamb from that we visited this summer. (We're eating one of the guys in the last picture of this post.) I had to leave work early, and then they ended up not getting to our house until 3 hours later, so that kind of sucked. But hey, with all this beef, I wasn't complaining!

And so we now have a very full freezer. Full of beef. Grass fed, healthily raised beef. Which is good, because I've decided that beef is my favorite meat. I think I could live on hamburgers and steak for the rest of my life. I mean, I'd probably like to have a pizza now and then too, but if I had to make a choice, it would totally be beef. Incidentally, I decided the other day that if I had to choose one drink for the rest of my life, it would be Kahlua and cream. So apparently I'd be living on Kahlua and cream and beef. Awesome!

We also got our shipment of this really nice wine that we've been getting since our trip out to Napa. So we had a fancy little dinner last Monday to celebrate all of our new food items. We didn't actually drink our new wine, because it came with a little note asking us to let it rest, so we drank last year's wine. Still, it was all quite delicious. Feast your eyes on this.

winter wonderland

I've had a lot of picture-heavy posts lately. I think I'm going to have to have some picture-free posts to even it out soon. I don't want anyone getting too used to all these pictures, cause when my supply dries up I don't want any complaints. Anyway, on to the post.

We put up our Christmas lights this weekend! Yes, I did a lot of work too, but the only picture of me working is from a very unflattering angle and since I'm in charge here, I decide when to post unflattering pictures of myself, and today is not one of those days. There's a total of almost 900 feet of lights up outside right now, and we have another 50 foot strand we could put up. We ran out of daylight and just haven't decided where it will go.

We also did a bit of cleanup yard work. Alfred cut down a bunch of dead palm fronds, I blew off the roof, and Alfred cleaned up branches from the yard. It looks a lot nicer now, plus it's less flammable. We plan on having a few bonfires while my family is down here for Christmas, and thought it might be helpful if the yard wasn't full of dry branches. Palm fronds burn really fast, too. I discovered that while we were working on our house a few years ago. We started a fire in a metal trash can to keep warm (it was some night in November) and when everyone else was in the house I threw some palm fronds on top. The fire was taller than the roof of the house within seconds. I was so afraid someone would look out the window and see this towering inferno and I'd be so busted. I almost shat my pants. Luckily palm fronds burn out pretty fast, too.

We ran into a bit of wildlife around the yard as well. Alfred unearthed what he first thought was a snake, but turned out to be a skink. He was hiding in a palm tree that Alfred was destroying, I mean trimming. Poor little guy lost his home. He eventually fell from the second story roof, but I couldn't find his body so he either vaporized on impact or ran away to safety.

Then when I was blowing off the porch (cause I made a mess from blowing off the roof) this gigantic thing was on the picnic table. I don't know if it was dead or what, but it didn't respond when I gently blew on it with the leaf blower. So I turned the blower on it full blast. That sucker's long gone.

And last, but not least, a dead opossum. At least, that's what I'm guessing it is, judging by its pointy little teeth (at the left of the picture) and its tail (at the right of the picture). I know it's not a bird!

But enough dead animals. Back to the decorations. I put up some garland inside the house, but haven't really gotten much else done inside.

The lights outside took up most of our time. We worked so diligently, then happened to notice that the ones we had lined the walkway with looked a little... suggestive.


It was totally by accident, I swear. Anyway, we adjusted them a bit, and got a couple more strands up, and voila! A winter wonderland!


And next weekend, we get our tree!