Sunday was the day of our party. It was also the day of blizzard-like conditions. As the hours of blowing snow went on we got the feeling that we might be stuck with a ton of leftovers. We got a couple phone calls from people cancelling on us. We ended up with a pretty small turnout – basically our parents and Adam’s aunt, uncle, and grandmother, and cousin (not the ones going to Florida, obviously.) It was still a good time. I got to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol and eat some good snacky foods. That said, we’ll be eating those snacky foods for the next week or so. Especially those cookies. I think we can handle that though. (I didn't take any pictures of the food - the camera was in the cat room and I didn't want to risk having to corral them inside there again if they got out...)
I put the tree back up around noon after confining the cats to their room through the duration of the party. After everyone left we let the cats out and they beelined for the tree. We decided to have our Christmas right then and take down the tree to avoid additional damage. By far the most popular gift was a little pouch of catnip given to the cats by my mom. We opened the box when it arrived and we initially put the gifts in the rodent room with the rest of them. But the cats just wouldn’t leave their gift alone so we had to hide it from them. Now we know why.
They chew on it, rub their heads on it, throw it around, fight over it, carry it around in their mouths. It’s seriously kitty crack. JC is generally pretty easy to get all crazy-like and hyper but the other two are pretty calm. Give them a little catnip though, and they turn into maniacs. Conner especially enjoys rolling around on the pouch, aggressively defending his position whenever JC or Ted try to join in his romp. Now we know what to get them when we want to have three wound-up cats randomly stampeding through the house with abandon.
Monday was Christmas Eve and we didn’t really have much planned. We headed up to Menards for their 48% off all Christmas stuff sale. We found some good items: a pre-lit Christmas tree for next year, shatterproof (and hopefully therefore kitty-proof) ornaments, Christmas cards. What we didn’t find were lights for outside. They didn’t have the clear twinkling ones we wanted so we’ll have to keep an eye out for those next year. We didn’t do much the remainder of the day. We headed up to church around 8:30. The bells played in the concert before the 10PM mass as well as during communion. Then we packed up, wished everyone a Merry Christmas, and headed home to bed. Way past my bedtime!
Christmas Day we slept in kind of late. Well, we woke up at 7 with the alarm but then both of us fell back asleep until almost 9. We went over to Adam’s parent’s house at 2 for their Christmas gathering. Adam’s mom was my Secret Santa and she got me a gravy boat (a reaction to the drooling cow at Thanksgiving, I’m guessing) and a huge wooden cutting board. After finishing up a late lunch there we headed over to his uncle Rich’s house. Adam started working on his uncle’s computer while we waited for his parents to show up. It took a lot longer over there than I had anticipated. We didn’t end up leaving until after 7PM. And I had the ham sitting in the sink defrosting all afternoon and anticipated a 1 ½ hour cooking time when we got home. I was pretty close too. We ended up eating dinner around 9. The ham turned out very well although the probe thermometer I borrowed from Adam’s mom didn’t go off so I think I might have set it wrong. Oh well. It all turned out ok and we have more leftovers. Woo! Makes Adam’s night to make dinner pretty easy!
Then Monday morning it was back to work. There weren’t a whole lot of people there and it remained pretty light for the rest of the week. Of course I was there for the long haul, having no vacation remaining and being kind of busy anyway.
Gift-wise, it wasn’t really a big year for getting things and that’s just fine. I’ve got a lot of junk all over the house already. My most anticipated gift was the ice-cream maker that Adam got me. I don’t remember what prompted the thought but I noticed that the KitchenAid stand mixer I have has an ice-cream maker attachment you can buy. I looked at that but figured it was too expensive and not really what I had in mind. But when we were at Lowe’s for something a few weeks back I took a look at their small appliances section and found this Cuisinart one.
Totally simple, only takes 20 minutes, and there’s no salt or cranking to worry about. I made my first batch - Peanut Butter Cup - last night.
Yum. Adam also got me a gift card to BBB (which I can always find something to use on. Heh.) and I got a cookbook from my mom. I sense a theme… I got Adam a couple of fun office desk toys from Office Playground along with a Mr. Beer “make your own beer” kit. My dad and Cheryl gave us some giftcards for PetSmart and Good Company, both of which we’ll obviously have no trouble using either. Oh - and an absolutely delicious raspberry cheesecake that we smartly decided to hide from the rest of the party attendees.
I think I totally forgot to mention this when we got it, but Adam’s parents gave us their gift a little early. His dad took the design of the IKEA headboard set we liked when we were out there last summer and built us a headboard/footboard/bed frame. It’s got “secret” compartments in the headboard and keeps the mattress pad from shifting all over the place.
So, a pretty good Christmas week although it's alway a little weird when the holiday ends up on a Monday or Tuesday. No plans for tomorrow night that I know of. I expect to be working late and we'll have to see where things go from there.
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