Christmas in Review!

Hey guys!! Thanks for all the well wishes for Pippin. He really hasn't made any progress this week, but he's getting along quite well for a "3-legged" dog. It's amazing how fast he can move on 3's. He hasn't lost much of his Pippin spunk, either. Any time people have come over this week he's been trying to hop around as much as he can to greet them, and since he can't jump he bounces around until they drop down to his level. The only thing that depresses him is his inability to jump up on his fave couch in the den to sun himself. Brent's planning to build a little ramp for him so he can go up and down as he pleases, though. From talking to the vet today, it sounds more and more likely that he will have to have the surgery. In the next week we should know more. I'd love for him to recover from this based on rest alone, but if this is going to be a reoccurring issue for him I'd much rather him have the surgery now while he's still young. For dogs his size it seems like the recovery from this surgery would be about 12 weeks, with the first two being the roughest. We'll see, and please still keep your fingers crossed for Pip.

So, rewind to Christmas!! With all the work on our now GORGEOUS hardwoods we didn't have a whole lot of time to focus on Christmas! Thurs and Fri night we baked and baked and baked getting ready for holiday visits. We spent Saturday with our families. My grandmother has 24-7 in home health care, and they charge time and a half for the holidays, so parents needed to be with her for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (and she really can't travel the couple of hours to Brent's parent's house.) We had a good dinner and got loads of Home Depot gift cards??? Can I ask for anything more? My parents said they had a "good year" so our Christmas bonus was even a little more than usual. Yay!!! They ear-marked it to go towards our kitchen remodel, which is what it would likely go towards anyway.








When we got home it was back to the kitchen for more cooking in prep for RobbRunner's visit. I think every night for several nights leading up to Christmas Eve we were up until around 1 am. More cooking and cleaning, and figuring out what to do with our bedroom furniture! We ended up shoving smaller pieces into a big closet we have, and we set up the rest of the furniture in corners of the dining room. Our dresser became a dessert buffet, our TV cabinet a floral display and the mattresses became a great place for holiday tapestries. It was make it work time!! Robb & family arrived right on time, and Pippin welcomed them with his big fall. Other than that, we had a great visit! Their boys (esp Ben) helped us make a big decision - the spiral staircase is staying. We've gone back and forth a million times about whether or not we would leave it when we expand the upstairs but kids LOVE it, and it's such a novelty. So, we've decided to put the "normal" staircase in the dining room, because our dining room is massive. The kids had a great time decorating Christmas cookies while we finished up cooking dinner. Dinner was a blast, and we had an awesome time hearing about their trip thus far and about what their life was like in general. After dinner we put our feet up while Chris and Jon played music for us. A very lovely evening!! Not only was it the first RBF meetup in our house but it was our first international meetup. (I love the picture Brent took of Robb & family where he forgot how short Ben is!!! He took some good ones, too!)











Later that night we ended up taking to the Emergency vet, so you're all caught up to Christmas now. We had a wonderfully low key Christmas. The night before had been a VERY late one, so we slept in and lounged around. We cooked a whole leg of lamb for lunch and then curled up on the couch with some wine and cheese and slept through most of Elf. Absolutely perfect. Later that night we curled up and watched the Holiday. Two movies in one day??? Unheard of for us. I think the last movie we watched was back in August!!!

Well, Brent is cooking us breakfast so I'm wrapping up here!!! I'll post pics of our BEAUTIFUL new bedroom later!! We slept in it for the first time since last month last night. YEAH!!!