Some pictures!

Decorating the tree:


The mantle:


Our pretty wreath, given to us by Christopher last year:


Tired from all the hard work:


Checking to see if Santa has come:


More to come, our computer is going wacky.

On top of spaghetti, all covered in cheese...

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house.
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

When out, in the bathroom, there arose such a splatter,
I sprang out the bed to see what was the matter.
Twas poor Kevin, puking his dinner.
The meatballs, we discovered, should have been made thinner!

It sounds so much better when I follow the style of a traditional Christmas poem, right? Despite 3 hours of simmering, the meatballs for our Christmas Eve dinner were still raw! At the time we were eating, we thought it was just pink from the sauce, but thanks to Kevin's digestive acrobatics, we discovered that was not the case. Luckily, Kevin got it out of his system in one swoop and spent Christmas day feeling tentatively OK. My mom made a (thoroughly cooked) turkey with all the fixin's for Christmas day and we are still enjoying the leftovers of both meals, nearly a full week later! Christmas day was sunny and had a high temperature of 66. Though not reminiscent of past Christmases, we all agreed the change was welcome and enjoyed several walks around the neighborhood.

The rest of our Christmas celebration went off without a hitch, and consisted mostly of lounging around, reading, watching movies, and a little bit of shopping. Oh yes, and eating cookies (that were also fully cooked..fancy!). Squirt had a blast chewing all the wrapping paper on Christmas morning, was very sad to see my family go...just the two of us seem to bore her a bit! Kevin & I were so happy my family could make the trip, it felt like a real treat to celebrate the holiday in our own home. We definitely missed his family in New York, though they weren't far from our thoughts as we followed their typical holiday traditions of meatballs for dinner, someone being sick, and a toilet overflowing. We look forward to seeing many of them in a few weeks when we travel home to MD for Christmas #2.

Baby it's cold outside!

The beginning of this week greeted us with quite the cold snap! This didn't cause us too much concern, as we spent the majority of our weekend hunkered down with our favorite obsession:

We have never managed to catch the show while it's running, so once we get the season on DVD we have a tendency towards marathon sessions as we catch up. Don't worry, we shift positions frequently enough to prevent bedsores and still find time to bathe. If you haven't watched, we definitely recommend it! Luckily, this DVD set came out before the new season starts, so we should actually be able to watch them in realtime this year. We're not looking forward to commercial breaks, though!

Despite our commitment towards LOST, it was a shortened season due to the writer's strike, so we weren't complete sloths all weekend. Kevin's hallway project was completed, including replacing all the locks since we gave a set of keys to our parents. Ok, maybe that's not why we replaced the locks, but it's a funny thought. All that's left is hanging up some pictures which have been hiding in our closet for almost 2 years now. Maybe then I'll actually get around to loading some pictures :)

Feeling accomplished!

This weekend was full of a variety of house projects, but I think both Kevin & I feel better to have them out of the way. First up was a thorough house cleaning, since "Operation Finish Hallway" had gotten dust on anything that didn't move or breath. After the inside work, I headed out to the front yard to do some raking. I'm hoping it was the last rake of the season, but the leaf situation in our yard is a bit insane so I know I shouldn't count on it. Meanwhile, Kevin & Jerry played under the house (hopefully) fixing our hot water heater by replacing a thermostat. I hope my family is prepared for a spa-like atmosphere in our house, because if they are lucky, they might ALL get hot water when they shower. I know, it's really amazing the kind of ammenities we offer our houseguests!

Now, on to the BEST part of our weekend! We put up our very first Christmas tree (real) & decorated our house for the holidays. We were worried how our pets might behave with the tree, but so far there haven't been any climbing attempts! They all do seem to be quite interested in the taste, though, resulting in some "Christmas puke"...ya know, puke w/ pine needles. They were polite about it, though, and puked on the tree skirt so very little cleanup was needed. Now that the house is all decorated, and my cookie baking skills have been honed (after 2 cookie exchanges!), I'm even more excited for my family to join is in celebrating our first Christmas at home in North Carolina! I'll get some pictures on here soon :)

Cookie Monsters!

'Tis the season for holiday baking! I don't think I've ever been much of a holiday baker, but with two cookie exchange parties over two weekends in a row, it's been easy to get a huge variety of delicious cookies with relatively little effort on my part. Kevin is very pleased! The great thing about the exchanges is that I'm also gathering some awesome recipes along the way. Again, Kevin is very pleased :) Although I do get a hankering for my mom's traditional Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have also become a big fan (and slight addict) of the website allrecipes.com. Many of our meals come from this website, some directly, and others with personal interpretations to our tailor to our taste. The chocolate cookie recipe I snagged from this website is awesome and a favorite of mine, so I thought I'd share it here. I'd like to think it is my awesome culinary skills that made them taste good, but really I follow a few tips left by reviews, one of the reasons that I adore allrecipes. I let the eggs reach room temperature before mixing them in and letting the cookie dough cool in the refrigerator before baking. I've made the recipe before without these steps, and once it came out fine and once they didn't, so I really don't know if it makes a difference or not. Anyway, here's the recipe!

Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Help with House Projects

As I mentioned, Kevin has been tackling a few house projects. I guess our pets decided that since I've been a slacker wife, they would fill in and lend Kevin a helping paw. Squirt was the first big helper on Saturday. Kevin took off a set of double doors which seperated our entryway and kitchen since we decided they didn't have much of a purpose. He then patched up the screw holes with wood putty. Well, Squirt decided the patch job just wasn't smooth enough, so she was kind enough to lick it in attempt to smooth it out. After discovering that she'd licked a decent chunk of putty off the wall, I sent Kevin to look for the bottle & ingredients. Reading the warnings for human ingestion, we realized it was probably pretty bad news for dogs as well. Since I had caught her in the act, we decided to try a home remedy some friends had told me about, which causes dogs to puke. 15 minutes and a few teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide later, poor Squirt was in a pretty sad state. After she was done (we kept saying.."Is she done yet?...oh, guess not..."), we had full confidence that she puked up every last bit of the putty, and she bounced back to her perky self within 30 minutes or so. It was definitely a scare we'll never forget, we definitely have to be more careful in the future about restricting access to our projects!

Our second helper this weekend was Hobbes. About 1 1/2 years ago, we had our house re-ducted, which resulted in our return vent being sized up and relocated, leaving a hole in our wall from the old vent. It had been covered by cardboard (and blocked by the aforementioned door), but Kevin set about patching it up permanently with a chunk of drywall. He got the drywall all screwed in and sat down with me to relax for a bit, but we kept hearing weird banging sounds. It's not unusual for the cats to be running around wrestling upstairs and make weird noises, but Cali was sitting on the couch w/ us, so we couldn't figure out what Hobbes could be doing by himself. Finally, Kevin deduced that poor Hobbes had filled the role of "Inspector Kitty" and had hopped through the hole in the wall while Kevin wasn't watching! Kevin went to the hole and said "Mr Hobbes! Hey Buddy!" and sure enough, poor Hobbes let out a big "MEOW!" in return. Luckily he wasn't trapped in there for more than 5 or so minutes and he didn't look too traumatized. We now realize we need to take pet inventory before sealing anything up!

Other Bits

It was really nice to have a weekend at home after so much traveling over Thanksgiving. I took Friday off to do a little Christmas shopping and spent some time baking in preperation for a cookie exchange on Saturday. We now have 7 varieties of cookies to get us through the upcoming week...it's a tough life, but somebody's got to do it. Saturday morning I met up with some friends and ran the Jingle Bell 5K. Despite the high-30's temperatures, there was no wind and the sun was out in full force, making for a fairly nice day. Kevin was there to cheer & capture some action shots.

Here's our group of runners:

I took almost 3 minutes off of my time from the last 5K I ran in June. I guess all of the endurance training from the 1/2 marathon has really made a difference. Here's a picture as I neared the finish line:

In other news, Kevin has gotten a bit of interest from the resumes he's been sending out. We're hoping he'll hear back soon on an interview he had the week before Thanksgiving, but he's finding no shortage of jobs to do around the house. Right now, he's tearing down the remaining wallpaper in our hallway/entryway and getting it prepped for paint. I wish I could say I was as motivated, but I think he's long ago accepted that he's the project initiator in our household. He spends his remaining time keeping our pets from duking it out, although we do have hope peaceful coexistence is possible, as evidenced in this picture:

I think the last bit of news is that I've accepted a new job within the same department I am currently working. It's a lateral move for me, but one that I hope will expose me to a broader range of work. I'll probably end up spending at least 1-2 days out of the office a week, which will be a welcome change from spending the entire day fixated on the computer. I'll start on Jan. 2!

Thanksgiving

So, still getting the hang of this blogging thing. I hear we're supposed to update often? Oops! Thanksgiving at home was busy as usual, but wonderful. I think New Years is the holiday that typically puts people into a mindset of reflection, but this Thanksgiving brought on many thoughts of the hills and valleys through which we have traveled this past year. This time last year, Jerry was beginning his battle against leukemia, and so much was unknown at the time...How would he respond? Would he have a bone marrow match? With these questions and many more being answered with all the best possible outcomes, we had no trouble realizing how there are so many things we are thankful for this year. We are so blessed to live in a time of modern medicine that is truly capable of miracles.

As for Thanksgiving, we followed one of my favorite mottos. "Go big, or go home". This meant two complete meals, one with each of our families. We spent the early afternoon at my parents, where we were joined by 14 of our close family and friends. As usual, mom pulled out all the stops with a wonderful meal and 5 pies! 5! Of course, the infamous gooseberry pie made an appearance and I was very happy to snag a leftover peice on Friday. After our first dinner around 3pm, we headed to Kevin's aunt's house where we consumed a second dinner. Thanksgiving day is the day that Jerry's large family (9 brothers and sisters. 9!) converges back to DC, which made for quite the crowd. As it happens with such a big family, there were a few more babies this year than last (our nephew Andrew included), so it was wonderful to see the new little ones and catch up with everyone else.

Our trip home also included a visit with my good friend Erin from high school, reworking ductwork in Christopher's house (Kevin's job, not mine!), a 3'rd Thanksgiving dinner with the Tindales (whom I cannot find words to describe just how much I miss!), the "Dogue Bowl" (a football game tradition that's been going on in Kevin's family for years ), and some time relaxing with Kevin's family. Andrew is getting so big, I'm sure the next time we see him he'll be cruising around and getting into all kinds of fun.