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.

Thanksgiving @ the Kidders'

SO! It is Friday the 17th and I have officially been done with my first quarter of the vet tech program for 8 days. And it's. been. fantastic! Soooooooooooooooo, so nice. I have loved having the time off just in and of itself but especially because it's before Christmas and has allotted me time to decorate at my leisure. I put off anything and everything holiday-related until finals were over and once they were I felt pressure to get goin' on all my stuff. (So much so that at 8:30 in the morning following my last final my eyes popped open and my brain started whirring. So, when I say "at my leisure" I mean it more in the sense that I had time to relax and do nothing after frantically rushing to put everything up all at once instead of my usual weekend of frantic decorating followed by going to work.) But I have finished the decorating and so now have time - and a bit more of an inclination - to post a few things that have been piling up in my queue. First up: Thanksgiving!

I actually don't have any photos of Robert and I at either of our parents' celebrations but, y'know, it was all the usual stuff. The next day, though, we were invited to a soiree at the Kidders' house that was a Thanksgiving/Christmas party/baby shower because Christina won't be able to fly out to CA for Christmas this year. (Boo.) As always, it was so much fun and Robert and I were happy to once again be included in the festivities. The best part was the 'tacky sweater' competition; the sweaters and decorative goodies were provided and all we had to do was gaudy up our sweaters as best we could. I definitely don't have a problem with, ahem, loud holiday wear (Christmas is a time for sequins and sparkle, damn it!) so that aspect of the design wasn't a problem for me. I am, however, super anal and in love with symmetry so it WAS very hard for me to just grab a bunch of stuff and slap it on my sweater haphazardly. Plus, my sweater had a design on it already and I just could not add things to the sweater that didn't go with the established motif! Needless to say, I didn't win. But I did get to keep my sweater so in a way I did. :o)

Here we are in our Christmas finery:

Robert just loved his doofy armband - he was convinced it made his sweater "couture."

And here I am with Chrissie and Emily. (Yes, I was the only one who kept their sweater on after the contest was over. I'm nothing if not festive!)

The little fluffball in my arms is Oliver, Emily and Paul's 5-month-old Maltese/Shih Tzu puppy. He was a big hit all night, as you can imagine... Though he was a big difficult to photograph!