Our *Temporary* New Addition

After we moved, we kicked around the idea of getting another dog or fostering one of the greyhounds that Rescued Racers has up for adoption. The week we babysat Dream's mom, that kind of made the decision for us since she acted so strangely and totally distanced herself from us.

While she was staying at her foster mom's house one weekend we had a wedding, Dream met a dog who'd just come from the track and they got along great. He went to a foster home, but his foster dad's allergies began to get really bad and he could no longer keep Longshot Manny aka "Barney."

We'd seen Barney at Borders several tiems doing gift wrapping with us, and he and Dream got along very well so we agreed to let him crash with us until he gets adopted. It's a little different having a 2-year-old boy in the house ... he likes to get up early and isn't the most graceful dog in the world. He's a bit bigger than Dream and really couldn't sneek up on anyone if he tried!

So far, he's getting acclimated very well and seems to like it here. He even slept until 9 a.m. today instead of getting us up at 3:15 like he has the past few mornings.

Family Christmas

Working in a casino, there's really no such day as a "holiday," which mean 95% of the time Roger will have to work. Fortunately, He was off by 6 and my mom and Bucky came to spend Christmas Eve with us.

Bucky had never been to our house and seemed to enjoy hanging out with Dream :). Rog's parents had planned to come the Friday before, but caught a bug that was going around and came the following Friday to celebrate.

Carving the turkey

Dream liked our new pickle ornament

Rog's new drills and mom "drilling"

Santa always brings new PJs

Dream was all about helping Rog's mom unwrap her gifts

A Truly Monumental Day

One of the features we liked about our house when we bought it was the two-car garage, which has been limited to a one-car garage since we moved in. With winter upon us, and Roger spending more time scraping his windows, we finally got things sorted out and organized yesterday afternoon so that two vehicles can comfortably fit inside.

We also had a little extra motivation when we found out for sure that Heidi will be staying with us for a few months satrting in January when she does an internship. We'll see who wins the battle of the covetted garage spots when we have three vehicles jockeying for position :).

The light on the garage door opener wasn't working either, even after we replaced the bulb. After some poking around, Rog figured out what the issue was and now we even have a light that works with the garage door opener!!

Now It's Starting to Look (& Feel) a Lot Like Christmas!

Last weekend we got our first snowfall of year, and Mother Nature wasn't a tease this time! We picked up about 4 inches overnight Friday/Saturday before getting another 4 dumped on us later that evening.

Dream wasn't too happy with it, but by Sunday she was running and flopping into the snow. I tried to get a picture of her when she first started to play a little bit, but she's so fast all I could get was her back half!

We were none too happy when we realized that we would now have to dig ourselves out. And we thought that living on a culdasac with 6 houses would keep us from getting scooped out until the bitter end. Fortunately for us, the county was plowing away on Meadow Wood Ct at 7:30 am! By the time Rog got off of work at 9, it was pretty much covered, as was the driveway. The driveway's on a pretty good hill, and combined with the snow he could only make it about half way up.

Sunday afternoon I went with a group to deliver presents to kids whose parents are incarcerated and found a few surprises. The first being that many other subdivision roads had not been cleared, which made for an interesting ride at times, and how the kids either lived in a shack or a four-car garage homestead. Incredible.

Sawing, Trimming and Lots of Vacuuming

On Friday night we braved the elements (a light mist and a bit of chill in the air) and picked out our first regulation size Christmas tree.

The alumni association at works runs a tree lot on one of our parking lots so finding a good place to go was pretty easy :). Of all the real trees I've had, this is the first one we didn't wait until it was 30 below and go tromping through a tree farm to cut it down so just picking one pre-cut was a little wierd. But it did get a fresh cut so it smells good and will take in more water. It's not dry yet and there's already a ton of needles on the floor.

It was a bit tall when we got it home, but other "fresh cut" from the opposite end solved that issue. We're probably the only people within 500 miles that have a tree in their dining room. We don't have any furniture there so why worry about moving things around in another room?

Here are some pictures of Rog getting it set up, a picture of each of our favorite ornaments (try to guess which ornament belongs to whom) and the finished product. Now to get started on some shopping...

Merry Christmas to Us

Our Christmas shopping for each other is done ... we finally decided it was time to retire the old TV we had in our living room that was a hand-me-down from Rog's parents. After our Black Friday fiasco with Sears, we found a plasma for the same price at a local electronics store if we were willing to wait a few days for their inventory to be replensihed. Not a problem. It's so nice to be able to sit on the coach and actually be able to read the Dish guide!

And yes, we watch Ugly Betty.

We've also done some shopping for our hound, she got her gifts yesterday. Her new "trick" that she learned at the end of the summer is how to dig shallow holes in the yard and eat the dirt. A lovely habit which turned worse when she started digging in our new grass!! To help her kick her habit, we bought boots for her to wear in the yard so she can't dig. She seems really impressed with them so far... She also got a sweatshirt since she has not body fat and a thin coat of fur she sometimes shivers in the house. She did not seem pleased when we took this picture, but we swear she's not possessed. Maybe because she had her "howliday" pictures taken by the rescue group earlier in the day.

Tis the Season!

Seeing this video really makes us realize that it is the holiday season :). It isn't the original, but even thought it's a few years old it's still pretty funny!