A Trout-y Christmas

Robert and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Trouts' this Christmas break and it was, as always, a wonderful holiday treat! We hadn't seen Christina and Rob since Christmas last year and so hadn't yet met little Gianna. She. is. adorable!!!  Little G was not afraid of strangers at all and let us hang with her quite a bit. She's such a good baby! Of course. All of my friends have fabulous babies that are friendly and well-behaved (in front of us, anyway). It's a conspiracy! Robert was, as expected, goo-goo for G and Chrissie did her best to play the baby card to try to persuade us to get in on the fun soon. (You can send her thank you card to us, Bob, and we'll forward it along. :o)  )  We always love catching up with everyone and had a great night of food and games. So much fun!!! Thanks to the Trouts for hosting everyone and to Christina for letting us horn in on the occasion.

I actually swiped this photo from Chrissie's Facebook page - it's Gianna on her first Christmas morning. I love this pic.

Robert is all aglow with baby fever. Again.

I told Rob we were going to send this photo out to unsuspecting  friends and family as a  "surprise!"  He seemed okay with it so it could still happen...

Little G has her own room at the Trouts' and it's absolutely adorable. Hopefully that means she'll come for visits more often!

G was a good sport and wore her Santa hat for us for a good chunk of the night.

Christmas Break '12: Unwrapped

Well, the annual Christmas break update has arrived, much delayed and abbreviated. Did I get sick? Surprisingly, no. Did I do anything super awesome? Robert took the two weeks off, too, and my clinic didn't need me past the first few days so I relaxed a lot. I consider that awesome in and of itself. Was it just that perfect window of time where you're away from real life long enough to really enjoy yourself right before you have to give it all up again and join the daily grind, making you nauseous for three days beforehand because you've remembered how nice it is to feel well rested and you realize you don't want to spend the rest of your life stuck in the daily grind? Yes, yes, yes and, unfortunately, yes.

But enough of that. On to the pictures!

One of this year's new ornaments. Even dicks need a cute ceramic by which to celebrate them when they're a part of your family. 

Another new ornament - we bought this one in Disneyland (imagine!) when we went for our anniversary this year. 

And here's our dorky little family section of the tree. Whee!

Linguini apparently had enough of the festivities and was ready to look for greener pastures.

Biji came home for a few days (literally) so we dragged him out for a belated birthday celebration with the Blackards. It was so good to see him! Only six more months and we can (fingers crossed) see him again...

This is one of only two pictures I shot at my family's Christmas Eve celebration. 

This is the other. Finding photos for the 2013 Shutterfly calendar is going to be rough.

Here is one of only five pictures (all of which were of cats) I took of the McCauleys' Christmas celebration. It's Gracie wearing Maria's earmuffs. Took me three tries to get this shot. Anne Geddes of animals I am not.

Gracie was ready to hang with Gweenz.

And this is my present from Robert. He got back on the creative train this year and I loved it!

Fantastic! A wrapping paper featuring all of my men. :o) Who could ask for more?

Linguini wanted to help me unwrap his gift. What a thoughtful guy.

He stayed under the paper all morning. We totally wasted our money on his gifts. 

Amy threw our friend, Morgan, a baby shower over the break and I was able to corral a few people for a photo before the festivities were over. The party was vet tech programmers only and it was held just a few days before school started up again. It turned out to be a great way to catch up with everyone and ease ourselves into the coming quarter.

Merry Christmas!

Our Christmases Continued

So, my scheme to guilt-trip my sister into sending me the photos of Christmas by mentioning it on the blog totally worked and now I have some photos to share! Ha ha! But, if you know my family and its get-togethers at all you know that some of the best photos I had to omit for... content, so the photos I have are mostly just of us and the Blackards. Just know that, despite a few speed bumps, Christmas Eve was for the most part fun and we had a good time. (How's that for a qualified statement?!)

My mom wasn't feeling so hot this year and so didn't get around to decorating the tree before Christmas Eve arrived. I wasn't about to risk making myself sick by getting near that sucker so Melanie and I strongarmed the boys into taking up the task. They really were not as excited about it as this picture makes it appear...



Mel and I made dinner and Robert and Wade cleaned up. A very nice system in my opinion. :o) But we wouldn't have survived the night without our Square Cow Coolers!



I cannot for the life of me recall what Robert has in his hand here (and no, not because of all the Square Cow Coolers) but I liked the Christmas tree-ness of my ensemble so up the photo goes.



The table in all its glory:


Place cards:



Quiggles! Garfunkel stayed at our place for the evening to avoid the mishaps of last year's Christmas Eve (let me just say that Funk doesn't mix well with children who insist on chasing him around and poking him) so Quigs hung out between me and my dad during dinner (to avoid the same child and the same poking).



Modeling our fabulous chapeaus (Mel's is a snowman and mine is a reindeer. Too bad you can't see'em):



Remember the very mysterious cranberry bread post from a few weeks back? Well, Robert FINALLY got his loaf on this, his 14th Kimball Christmas. Woohoo!!!

(No, I'm not affiliated with the West Side - that's a 4.)

And he was very, very, very happy:

Every year, I make the much-beloved Boston Cream Pie. This year, my top layer broke apart and the custard layer on which it sat was not conducive to keeping it from drifting apart like the continents. *sigh* So here is my cake, complete with butt cracks. (The peppermint plate is mine, though, and it's still awesome!):



But I heard it still tasted pretty good:

Our Christmases

Remember when Robert bought me a super awesome camera for my birthday? Me, too. Unfortunately, the box didn't come with an improved desire or ability to take photos so I have no photos of either the Kimball or McCauley Christmas celebrations. (The post's title is a bit of a misnomer... Sorry.) I'm pretty much just SOL on the McCauley photos but Melanie took oodles of photos on Christmas Eve so once I get those bad boys from her I'll put'em up. In the meantime, peruse the few photos I did take. (Apparently, something about dogs triggers my very weak photo-taking gene!)

Robert did a beautiful job wrapping my gifts:


I sported some nifty holiday footwear:


My mom worked VERY hard to get Quigley interested in his bully stick gift:


It didn't take as much to get the dogs interested in the Skineez skunk:


Quigley went crazy on that skunk's ass!


All that playing tuckered the pups out pretty quickly:


Quigley eventually retired to his new Snoopy bed. You know I'm a sucker for Snoopy!


To be continued...

Our Christmas Card to You

This year, Robert and I opted not to mail out a Christmas card. Of course, once all of your beautiful cards started arriving I felt like a huge ass. So, in the spirit of card giving, I whipped up a little holiday message for you all:

Love,
Lauren, Robert, Garfunkel (and Quigley!)

O Tannenbaum: The Older Years

I'm sure most of you will recall the Open Letter to Future Lauren that I penned last year, urging myself to consider forgoing a real tree and all its associated ills for a fake tree. Well, it is with some-but-not-as-much-as-I-thought* sadness that I report that I have finally bitten the bullet and purchased a fake tree. I haven't really been truly sick since I started school (*knocks wood*) and I really wanted to keep it that way. Plus, even though I haven't been "sick," my sinuses have been unhappy with me to varying degrees ever since I started school, which I attribute to all of my time spent around various hairs, fur and hay. I definitely cannot afford to be felled by my annual January sinus infection so I asked Robert to do a little research into what kinds of fake trees are out there. Ultimately, though, we were limited by time and money so we hit the pavement one weekend and found ourselves a pretty darn decent tree at a reasonable price. The selection of faux trees is sort of annoying because for some reason manufacturers think that people who want fake trees also want pine cones or glitter on their tree. Maybe some people do but I certainly don't. I also don't want fake snow, a combination of fabric and plastic branches or a tree pre-lit with both big and little bulbs. I just want(ed) a plain tree, damn it! But they were few and far between. We did wind up having to buy a tree that was pre-lit with white bulbs (not my fave - they look too sterile to me) so I made Robert promise either take the white lights off or add colored lights to the white lights when we got home. He did (of course) so we grabbed the box and made for the checkout line.

Here's how the tree looked fresh out of the box:


And here's the finished product!


Let's take a little closer look, shall we? First, with flash:


Now, flash-free:


Up close!

In all honesty, the tree looks just fine and I have enjoyed not being sick. I haven't gotten to enjoy any hot chocolate in my phlegm-free state but I have indulged in some caramel apple cider and it was GOOD. :o) And even just walking past tree lots while going into stores made me realize the fake tree was a good move - I could feel my nose and eyes start freaking out as people were shaking their trees to get'em on their cars. It's not necessarily a tree we'll have forever but it was a good decision for this year and even if it only lasts a few more Christmases we'll have gotten our money's worth. And Christmas just isn't Christmas without a tree! I just hope someone out there buys what would have been my Charlie Brown tree...

* Aside from a fake tree just being a general bummer, we bought that super awesome tree stand last year and now we can't use it! Suckballs.