merry christmas, happy holidays everyone. i hope everyone who reads this is enjoying the holiday, religious or not. j & i are off to make turkey & stuffing & artichoke dip. we're cooking the turkey & dip at his parents' house, and then we're all going to my parents' house for dinner around 4pm. busy day! i think this is my second time making a turkey. we're opting for the bag method of cooking. i hope it works! anyway, i hope everyone is as lucky as i am to have such a wonderful, caring family. cheers!

ucky yucky

i had the stomach flu today. it woke me up at 3am. i had to go to the dr to rule out appendicitis. i'm to attack pepto bismol with ferocity. what a waste of a day. all day in bed, and no good sleeping being accomplished. i feel as if i were run over by a train, so achy. can't find a comfortable position in bed. i just want to feel normal again. :(

who woulda thunk it???

my friend billy pinecone told me that on the very same day (today) that i posted the turducken on my blog (see below), lil' monk (whoever that is...) suggested that as an entree for the chinese kung fu club o' deKalb holydaze party! whooaaa. the stars are aligning. perhaps i should buy a lottery ticket.

look at these cuties!!!!!! they're my friends' dogs. so well behaved to stay still for a picture like this! i just had to post this adorable picture.

CHICKEN PORN

so... i was browsing online at my favorite grocery store, new seasons market, and saw turducken listed under "specialty meats". i was looking for things to cook for christmas eve dinner, to order ahead. i already have a turkey ordered to cook for christmas day. i had no idea this sort of thing existed. evidently, a turducken is a deboned turkey stuffed with a deboned chicken stuffed with a deboned duck. the name is a portmanteau of those three items. it's also made with the turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. j & i had a bit of a chuckle over it. couldn't it also be a chuckenturd? regardless, both sound gross. this turducken in the picture (from wikipedia) has bacon on the top.

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
our stupid power is back on, apparently as of 1am this morning. there was a huge wind storm thursday night, which knocked out power 6 minutes before i finished teaching. luckily i assumed the worst would happen and had a headlamp with me, which i used to guide the student & parent out to their car. however, i ended up having to cancel all my lessons on friday ($$ i could really use). we toughed it out thurs & friday night without heat. we woke up early sat morning at 6am to be picked up by our awesome friend m at 6:30am to go skiing, because there was no point sitting around in a freezing house. i didn't have the best skiing day, because it was colder than usual, and i wasn't wearing enough clothing (long story). had we had power, i would've had internet access to see what the weather was going to be like, & would've been more prepared. i spent more time than usual indoors, while the boys (who never get cold) played. i think i was just partly chilled from spending so much time in a cold house. we finally gave in to our parents' offer of staying at their house. luckily the power was finally fixed, so now we're getting our house back to normal. lots of candles to put away. dishes & clothes which can be washed. rotten food to be thrown away. my kids' recital is this afternoon, and we have work to do in the house afterwards before a holiday party in the evening. gotta get going...

U, CONGRATULATIONS ON WINNING THE CELLO POSITION IN THE DETROIT SYMPHONY!!!!
YOU ROCK!!!
WE'LL MISS YOU!

looking forward to the cookie baking party. :)

last night we enjoyed the movie "stranger than fiction" and dinner thanks to a giftcard and free movie tickets. today i threw together a pot roast & put it in the crock pot before leaving for the old house to work on the hole in the ceiling. our friend m helped us out with it - we couldn't have done it without him. we still have to add more plaster gunk to the new drywall, texture it, and paint it, but that should be pretty straightforward. i got home and realized i had set the time for the pot roast, but never actually turned it on. i hope the meat is still ok. i'm still kicking myself... it's just the second time i've used the crock pot. guess i'm still getting used to it.

we got our treeth (fake tree - it says treeth on the box) all assembled & decorated over sun-wed this week. vinny has evil eyes in this picture, as i took it with all the lights off. it also partially shows our new couch, which finally arrived on tuesday. we ordered it way back on labor day weekend, and it took a long time to show up.

here's a group of a few of us wine tasting. j, k, j, and t. j & t live in walla walla, and k is the captain of j's indoor soccer team.

here's a picture of the icy grape vines in walla walla. it's colder there than in portland. it was actually supposed to snow the weekend before we went to washington, or at least there was supposed to be an ice storm. thankfully, the weather ended up being warmer than all the forecasters thought, because we wouldn't have made the drive if we had to deal with an ice storm. i was a little cold-weather hungry, though, so i found the ice particularly beautiful.

j got me a canon powershot sd600 digital elph camera for my birthday. this is one of the first pictures i took with it. i'm wearing the "fetchings" a knitted for me.

when we got home from walla walla, we came home to this: all my thick running/skiing socks gathered into one place by the food dishes by vinny. for some reason he's always loved dragging my thick socks across the house over to the feeding bowls. i guess he thinks he kills them, and likes to show it off. he drags them out of my lowest drawer in my bureau. i don't really understand it, but i do think it's cute.

our hotel in walla walla was just a holiday inn, but it was wonderful because it had full breakfasts with waffles & hard boiled eggs & such, and it had an indoor pool and hot tub, as you can see in the picture.

last weekend we spent in walla walla, washington. we drove there after i finished teaching at 6:30 last friday, and arrived there at 11:30pm. we were there to do a lot of wine tasting. the first weekend of december is a major wine tasting weekend. there's barrel tasting almost everywhere, and they have a holiday parade on saturday night. we were there with friends of ours, and had a good time and found some decent wines.