What a fun weekend (minus the catfight...)!

I feel like we've been celebrating ever since Thursday. So much family time, food, and gift exchanging....it was great! The nice thing about our anniversary being on the 22nd of December is that it turns the holidays into back-to-back days of fun. And, this year, since we celebrated with Travis's family yesterday (the 26th), it turned into pretty much 5 days of anniversary/family time/Christmas.

Our anniversary was really nice. 4 years...wow! We ate lunch at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse in downtown Huntsville, and it was awesome. I got crab cakes, and Travis ordered a steak (of course!). We were stuffed by the end of the meal after an appetizer, salad, and our main meal. No room for dessert :) We headed to the Rave after lunch to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie. It was just as funny as the first one. I love those movies!

After the movie, we hurried home to get packed up to head to Trussville for a few days. The plan was that we would take Gabby and Felix with us, so we got all of the rest of our stuff packed up first. It's always an adventure trying to round up those kittens into their carrier, but this time was by far the worst. Gabby is easy; she would probably let me just pick her up and carry her to the car, but not Mr. Felix. Felix was sitting in the kitchen chair letting Travis pet him and purring like a sweet kitty. I had the carrier ready, and Travis was just going to pick him up really fast and put him in the carrier. Well, just as Travis got his hands around him, Felix dug his claws into the chair cushion. After a few seconds of tugging, Felix finally let go, but then he started really freaking out. Travis eventually got him into the carrier, but only after Felix bit Travis's hand really bad and scratched up his hands and arms. I quickly closed the carrier door, and by that time there was blood all over the floor, all over Travis's jeans, and all in the sink. So, it took a few minutes to clean Travis up, and just about the time we were finished, I turned around just in time to see Felix scurrying across the kitchen floor into the living room. I obviously didn't latch the carrier shut very well! So, we ended up with me being mad at Felix, me being mad at myself, Travis being mad at Felix, and Travis being mad at me. The only was who wasn't mad or in trouble was Princess Gabby. We both knew that Felix wouldn't let us anywhere near him for the rest of the night, so it ended up being a lost cause. We had to leave the kitties at home, and luckily Cheryl and Melissa came over and checked on them and fed them while we were gone.

According to something I read on the internet, up to 80% of cat bites get infected, and the worst place to get bitten is your hands, so Friday afternoon Travis and I headed up to a doc-in-a-box to get some antibiotics and steroids. His hand looks somewhat better, but I'm afraid he may have to go back to the doctor sometime soon if it keeps looking so red and puffy.

Friday was pretty much a lazy day in Trussville. We helped Mom put some casseroles together, did some cleaning, and got ready for two days of Christmas lunch at the house. Saturday, the Palmers came over for a late lunch, and then we opened a few presents and took some pictures before going to see Granny at her house. Then, Sunday after church, Gran, Aunt Patty, Christy, and Audrey came over for lunch and we opened presents with them before going to visit Dadaw at Greenbriar. We headed back home after church Sunday night, stopping at Baugay's for a few minutes on the way to give her a Christmas present and spend a little while with her. Then, yesterday, Cheryl, Tyler, Alisha, Josh, Emily, and Melissa all came over to our house for a slightly belated Christmas celebration. We opened presents first, then ate lunch, played Settlers of Catan, ate pizza for supper, and then played Balderdash. It was a fun day...and a fun weekend in general! I was spoiled with entirely way too many presents, as usual, but it was really nice to spend time with our families. I know this year I am valuing family time more than ever.

Here are some pictures from our fun weekend:

Christmas Eve lunch

Mom with her new Alabama hoodie

Travis got me some more fine china for my collection!

Family pic :)

We decided to take pictures with Mom's do-rags!

Even Dad and Travis cooperated :)

Posing in front of the "pink" tree

Granny got pretty excited about her gifts!

I just love this picture of Mom...

Callie loves Christmas too!

Pictures with Gran on Christmas Day

Gabby wanted her picture taken too :)

She says "Merry Christmas!"

Alisha and Tyler

Alisha and Tyler fooled us pretty good with that box on the left! :)

Emily and Josh

Alisha looking at the photo book I gave her

Cheryl got some good smelly stuff! :)

Look what a mess we made!

 

 

Snuggle time :)

Travis doesn't have to go back to work until next Tuesday (hooray!), so he's going to try to get his study organized during his time off. We've also ordered blinds for most of the windows in the house, so I'd like to hang some of those too if we have time. It seems like the week between Christmas and New Years is always so busy, so we'll see how much we get done. We've already got plans for every night this week (including tonight) until Saturday. I'm working tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday, so Travis will have to hold down the fort around here while I'm gone I guess.

Hope you had a very merry Christmas like we did! Now if we could just hit the fast forward button and skip to about April or so. January through March are definitely my least favorite months. Oh well! :) At least, we have a garage to park in this year...no more scraping ice off the windshield at 5 AM!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gotta look on the bright side, right?

Pausing to think...

Next week is our anniversary on the 22nd and then Christmas 3 days later! We've been married (not quite) 4 years. Seems like a lot has changed since 12/22/07! We've graduated from college, started working full-time (er...sort of), moved a bunch of times, more than quadrupled our living space (now, that's crazy!) from our tiny apartment in Presidential, bought a car, and adopted two crazy kittens! I was texting one of our friends from Tuscaloosa the other night who we haven't seen in forever, and it really made me miss all of our friends from college. It's sad that we've all moved away, gotten busy, and don't see each other much anymore...except at weddings it seems like! I really do like living up here for the most part, but I just wish we could transplant all of our friends into our neighborhood! I'm determined to plan a reunion for sometime next spring or summer either here at our house or at the lake house, and I'm going to plan it far enough in advance that I better see everyone there!! :)

Back to our anniversary...I think the plan is that we're going to go out to eat at Ruth's Chris either for lunch or dinner (not sure yet) before heading to Trussville for a few days for Christmas! Neither of us have eaten at Ruth's Chris before, but we've got a gift card expiring on 12/30 so it seemed like the perfect time to go. Hope it's good!

I think we're pretty much finished with our Christmas shopping and just about everything is wrapped and under the tree. Hooray! We even mailed out our Christmas cards yesterday! I don't know how we got so far ahead this year, but I'm going to attribute it to our online shopping. We bought almost everything in one sitting on a Monday evening...very nice!

I've worked 4 out of the last 6 days, which is a lot for me, so I'm enjoying a day off today. Doing laundry, dishes, putting clean sheets on the bed....pretty typical for a Wednesday. I'm going to go run this afternoon in the neighborhood...it's supposed to get up to 70 degrees today! Have I mentioned before that I'm teaching the K-1 class at church? It's been going pretty well so far. I just have 3 kids in the class, so I can handle that (most of the time!). I'm almost through with my first teaching session, and I'm starting another one next Wednesday.

Felix and Gabby are as adventurous as ever. Here are some kitty pictures from the last week...

I think Gabby was taking a break from giving Felix a bath! Doesn't he look so excited? :)

Gabby loves the bathtub window!

She also loves to sit on that ledge!

Felix usually follows behind, of course...

Mom had her 7th chemo treatment on Monday. Only 1 more to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! After her last treatment, she'll have a 3 week break (most likely) before starting radiation. Hopefully she'll be done with everything by early March! I'm heading down there tomorrow morning and staying probably until Friday night. Thanks for your prayers and thoughts for her so far! Keep 'em coming! We'll have to plan a big celebration in March when she's all through.

This holiday season I'm trying to do a better job of not getting so caught up in all of the craziness and instead, being thankful for great family and friends and a whole lot of other things. Hope you're having a wonderful week and counting your blessings too!

"God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say 'thank you'?" ~ William Ward


Erin

Christmas is forever...

In case you were wondering, I didn't completely forget what to do at work when I went back last week. 2 weeks is a long time to be gone, but luckily the rust came off pretty quickly once I got back into the swing of things. This week, I'm working 8 hours Thursday and 12 hours Friday, and that's it. Shouldn't be too bad! And, Travis actually has a 5 day work week this week. With so many holidays in the fall and our bed and breakfast trip, he's mostly had 4 day weeks since probably early October. It's been nice! He'll be taking off from our anniversary to January 2nd as well, so he's really looking forward to that.

We're almost through with our Christmas shopping already, which is probably a record! Usually, I'm always buying everything the week before Christmas. We've got to return one thing and get a few more things, and then we'll be finished I think. Everything we've bought is even wrapped and under the tree already. The kitties (and I) are loving it.

Did I mention last time how much they love the Christmas tree? I'm sure I did. They especially love the ornaments and bows on the presents. The first few days the tree was up, we kept finding ornaments on the floor that had been pulled down. Now, they've moved on to bows. If your present is missing its bow this year, you can thank Felix and Gabby. The bows aren't even sticky anymore they've been pulled off so many times! I may just have to tape them down. We like to leave the tree lights on all the time when we're home except when we're asleep, so we always turn them off when we're going to bed or about to leave the house. Well, yesterday morning we were getting ready for church, and I came out into the living room to find the tree lights on. I thought that was strange...Why would we turn the lights on when we're about to leave? So, I asked Travis why he'd turned the lights on. He looked at me funny and told me he didn't turn them on. Well, I know I didn't turn them on, and they were off a few minutes earlier that morning. Apparently, the kitties must have turned them on! The lights are plugged into a surge protector, and I guess they flipped the switch! If it happens again, we'll know they're doing it on purpose...what funny kitties!

Here are some pictures of our Christmas decorations so far...

Kitty stockings! Aren't they cute???

Our stockings from Target! (I haven't taken the tags off of anything on the mantle yet)

The mantle is tree and reindeer themed, I guess :)

I think I'm going to take the red tree back b/c it's a little too tall, but I really like everything else!

Is he cute or what?

Closeup

They LOVE that tree!

We still need to hang our wreath on the front door, and after that I think we'll be finished decorating for this year. We're going to wait and get outdoor decorations next year (can't spend all our money on this stuff!).

I need to give a fantasy football update since I haven't done that in a while. The season started off horribly, but I've made a miraculous comeback! 6 wins in a row! I'll finish the season with a winning record barely (7-6), and I think I'm actually going to make it into the playoffs. Never thought that would happen!!

Speaking of football, ROLL TIDE!!! We're going to the national championship again!! After Oklahoma State's big win Saturday night, I thought our chances were over, but I'm glad we're getting one more shot at LSU this season. Hopefully this game will end better than last time! I just checked Stubhub, and prices have come down a little bit. We could buy 2 tickets for a whopping $1375 a piece! No thanks! After buying a house and a car this year, we definitely don't need to be spending money like that. Anyone know of any cheaper tickets out there? We may end up just driving down there to see if we can find some, but we still haven't decided yet.

I've changed my blog layout quite a bit, and I'm not sure what I think about it yet. I'm missing the side columns that I used to have, and I kinda want those back. If you don't mind, give me your feedback on whether you like it better this way or not!

I think that's all for today, so I'll leave you with this thought...

Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself...
~Norman Wesley Brooks, "Let Every Day Be Christmas," 1976