Bit’s O Christmas via phone pictures

Over Christmas, my parents very graciously let our pup run around their backyard (since locking her our courtyard for a few days would be downright cruel). She had the time of her life…she seemed sad as we were headed back home. Charley took this video of her on his phone before we left but she was playing what we call “husky jousting”. She does this in our apartment too. If you squat and clap, she’ll run like crazy, and then loop back around and run at you like tag. Needless to say, there was a huge furry bundle of energy in the backyard during Christmas and Sam the cat wasn’t to happy about it. He took off in search of a dogless backyard. Thank goodness he came back in the end, but I doubt Sam will ever be friends with the dog.

and while my parents are mostly cat people, I feel like my dad would get along with this dog pretty well:

Back home after christmas, juneau is still waking us up in the typical Juneau fashion. Every morning. That’s right, and alarm clock I can count on (usuallly by 9am….so when I wake up for work at the crack of dawn she just opens a sleepy eye and glares at me for turning on the bathroom light).

 

And we were late for my families Christmas eve celebration because charley had to work. He was supposed to work til 12 but got off at 5:30. he was making these “12 days of Christmas” trays. Each tray is for two people. TWO PEOPLE!? I’m pretty sure they could have gone without and we’d have been okay on time. The strange tree contraption is  a french wedding cake, creme puffs coated in caramel.

My cousin and her husband picked out this for our Christmas present:

Awesome right? Frodo and Sam look like the Beatles and Bilbo Baggins looks a lot like Regis Philbin.

and speaking of cool gifts…

Charley got this personal pie maker from my mom and dad. I was in on the secret so I was dying the night before as charley made mini pies for our white elephant exchange….I was itching to tell him that what took him an hour the night before, he could do in ten minutes later. From the second it entered our house, charley has been happier than a fat kid with a bag of cheetos. He must have made like six sets of pies when we got home…cherry, leek, chicken, …I’m pretty sure if he ran out of ingredients he might go looking for our cities rats. If his straight razers weren’t packed away in storage, he’d be singing songs from Sweeny Todd and selling the “worse pies in Charleston”.

Since we had so many, we gifted them to some very  happy neighbors and hobo’s. (I guess we aren't grumpy Grinches after all). He also found out that it’s the perfect contraption for poached eggs. It’s gives them the firm outside and soft but not runny consistency inside. Since he’s a guy, of course he added some bacon to the mix.