Wiiiiiiiiii

Hey everyone! I hope you've all had wonderful Christmases full of whatever you wanted/needed!

We had a great "Christmas Eve in Pajamas". I started the day off by making a kick-a coffee cake and we started the first Lord of the Rings movie. We've always wanted to watch all 3 in one day and just never taken the time to sit down for such an incredibly long period of time. After breakfast we watched #1, then took a break for the grocery store WHICH WAS CRAZY & some lunch, watched #2, then made dinner and watched #3! WOW! They're such amazing movies but I have to admit it was semi-exhausting to watch them all day long! And we technically got finished at 1 am so we didn't see them ALL on Christmas Eve, but close enough! It did make a lot more sense watching them all together and now we can be in that exclusive nerd club of people who have watched them in one "sitting".

Christmas Day we opened the rest of our presents to each other, kicked a fantastic lunch, took a nap and just generally were lazy! My exciting Christmas gift from Brent was my very own Nintendo Wii. He's always been great at making sure I have whatever the hot ticket item of the year is, and this year was no different. (Although the year Tickle Me Elmo was so big we did contemplate selling it, and probably should have!) It's been a blast, and technically I should be great at it since I'm one of those people who moves the remote around and points it at the screen anyway! As is always our luck the one that Dice so graciously helped Brent acquire showed up not working properly (it wouldn't take the disk) so it is a good thing that Brent made me open it early. He called the people at Nintendo Wed night around 9 pm and they had a brand new one on our doorstop on Friday. How is THAT for customer service??? I need to take some pics of us with our Miis. We are so cute!

Brent also got me our very first George Foreman grill, making us officially the last people to acquire one. The hilarious thing is that we got it after our VERY expensive, top of the line kitchen renovation making it something we absolutely don't need. I saw a cooking challenge on foodtv the other day using the grills and it just looked so fun that I decided I wanted one!

Speaking of, we cooked a turkey on Christmas Day for the two of us. This is the first time we've done a turkey in the new kitchen and WOW, if I could marry my appliances I really would. During all our Oct-Dec baking season I'd already fallen in love with the convection oven and my ability to cook 3 racks of cookies to perfection at the same time, and now I love convection roasting. The bird cooked 25% faster than regular time and was perfectly golden on every side. It also has a temp probe that plugs into the oven and gives you a constant reading of the bird's temp. Once it reached my pre-set temp reading it shut off, leading to a PERFECT and moist bird!!!!! LOVE IT!

Wednesday it was back to work and the usual schedule for both of us. And back to the gym for me. The gym is already starting to fill with strangely clad new years resolutionist people. I am so frightened for what next week is going to look like. I had a TERRIBLE run Wed and had to stop after 2 miles and get on the elliptical. I think my system is shutting down from all this sugar. Today I tried again and ended up with a pretty decent run. I always have wretched workouts the first couple back from any major sugar or food binge, so I really didn't expect this week to be a glorious one at the gym!

That's it from here! I need to dump pics from my camera of all our holiday fun. This weekend the tree is coming down before it catches fire. It smelled like it was starting to burn on Christmas Eve after being on all day. Gotta love the real trees in drought stricken areas. This tree has been guzzling the water at insane rates.

Happy Friday! And here are some Christmas pics that I have dumped.....

Yule Log Cake: Soooooo good!








For some odd reason our mothers get a massive kick out of trying to wear semi-matching holiday sweaters every year. I'm thinking Brent and I need to surprise them one year by wearing matching sweaters.....








Brent and Santa sharing a moment.....to my disapproval








My MIL did a little tree just for Pippin with a Pippin ornament and decorations - Milkbone dog biscuits hung my ribbon. It took about 2 hours for him to "discover" this tree and my dad got great amusement watching him rip the lower "ornaments" off and eat them - ribbon and all. And by amusement I mean he watched him and didn't try to stop the destruction...












And finally, the traditional Christmas pictures. First is just my family (parents + us) and then the second one is both our families (minus my brother in Cincy and his family who don't come down for Christmas since my parents go up there for New Years).