He's One Hell of Turkey Dropper!

We spent our New Year's Eve at the home of one of DH's co-workers. They had a small party with enough food to feed an army, which included an entire turkey.  Somewhere along the line DH was "selected" as the one to have the "privilege" of getting to drop the turkey into the boiling hot oil.  I had an inkling - and that inkling was confirmed later - that it is less of an honor and more of a risk, as apparently turkey dropping can go quite poorly if not done well.

But who knew?  DH is an awesome turkey dropper.

The oil is behind you, honey

There you go!

Starting the drop

Slowly now

Soooo serious

This was the part where it was sort of scary

Success!

I wish I could have eaten some of the professional dropped turkey, but alas, it was fried in peanut oil and I didn't really want to risk starting off 2011 in the hospital.  I hear it was tasty though!

An unoriginal New Year's resolution

I like to try to avoid the cliches when it comes to New Year's resolutions, but sometimes you've just got to admit that losing weigh and healthy eating is a popular resolution because it's one that most American's need. 

We are no exception.

DH weighed in at his all time highest weight ever a day or so before January 1st, and promptly resolved to do something about it.  I was totally on board as I am always looking for a workout partner and if DH isn't interested in eating healthy food then it's a waste of my time to cook it.

We both took some "before" pictures although I'm not going to post those here. But here's a nice picture of DH on his first workout of 2011.

The main focus of our resolution is actually NOT to lose weight (at least for me it's not.)  DH needs to lose weight, so that will be a definite perk, but our main resolution is to focus on healthy eating.  The past few weeks we were sooo far away from that, although ordering pizza or making french fries and buffalo chicken instead of something more nutritious. 

So on December 31st we went to Giant Eagle ready to make an enormous shopping purchase since we had 20% off Food Perks (by the way, I do NOT recommend doing a massive shopping trip on New Year's Eve day; it took nearly two hours and I was so exhausted I was ready to faint - seriously.)  We stocked up on healthy foods - fresh and frozen vegetables, whole grain breads, and lean meats.  We bought lots of legumes and I even bought some yogurt (which I hate) and almond milk, in an effort to try to get more calcium.  We are counting calories, yes, but as long as we're putting good foods into our bodies and getting exercise, we're not going to worry ourselves to death about going over our daily recommended calorie allowance.

I got a shiny new pair of running shoes for Christmas from DH's dad and stepmom, and I LOVE them.  This is my first pair of actual, real live running shoes. 

Ewww.. is my skin really that scaly and dry?

 
Before, I always opted for relatively cheap basic street sneakers that I would then use for running.  I had no idea what a difference a pair of real running shoes could make in terms of comfort on my feet, even when I'm just walking.  It took me a solid hour - my first full workout in them - to get used to the feeling, because they definitely feel different (not bad, just really really different.) They're far tight in the heels and roomier in the toys, and are made primarily of mesh so they're really flexible and pliable compared to other shoes.  I could go on and on but just know that I love them.

I also got a set of resistance bands that I intend to use for building some upper body strength, since I currently have none.  I learned some basic resistance band exercises during the CCAC fitness class I took last fall, and I hope to incorporate some of those exercises in my evening routine.

So, that's all I'm going to say about our New Year's resolution for now.  I'm not going to write about it every day.  I'm not going to "weigh in" on any sort of regular basis (although for the record, I'm currently right at 150).  If we missed a workout or have a bad snack I'm not going to harp on it.  We're going to do good things for us, and we're going to do those good things because we want to.

And hopefully, that will be a recipe for success. 

Christmas in Delaware

During our Christmas visit in Delaware, DH's older brother gifted the other two younger brothers with matching t-shirts that all said "Ho."  Put them together and you have HO HO HO.  Pretty funny in and of itself, right?

But that's not enough for the Hartman brain.  Oh no.  

DH had the brilliant idea of spelling out OH OH OH instead.  It looked something like this. 

Two Oh's. 

Still two Oh's. 

This went on for awhile, I won't bore you will all of the pictures.  Actually, now that I look at all of the pictures and consider just how long those two were on the head's on a concrete floor with little more than a mat between their head's, I'm impressed that they didn't pass out immediately upon standing.

FINALLY!

OH OH OH.

You gotta love it.

A week at Nana's house

Murphy spent the week with my parents while we were traveling around, and they brought him to Pittsburgh on the 30th, the same day that we returned.  It wasn't until the afternoon on January 2nd that he finally showed any signs of life.   Prior to that, he was literally just a lump on the couch. 

We were actually worried that he might be sick or that something else might be wrong with him after two full days of total laziness, but all seems to be fine now.  I guess I should look on the bright side - last time he spent a week at Nana's house (well, actually it was two weeks that time), he hated us when he had to come back home because life was so good for him there.   That time it took almost a solid week for us to feel like we had our old dog back.

One final quick note regarding Murphy and Nana's house.  In the winter, DH and I make doggy booties with sandwich baggies and rubber bands, because Murphy's paws freeze in the snow.  My mom decided to buy him actually doggy booties that she found at PetCo.  Unfortunately, whoever designed these booties clearly never owned a dog - they were NOT designed to be anything even remotely similar to a dog's foot.  We still made him try them on, but they only resulted in these ridiculous and sort of sad pictures.

Do those things look like they're going to fit a dog's foot?

No.  No, they do not.

Note to self: Go into the doggy booty business - there is clearly a market.

Happy New Year!

So much for those "posts via phone" that I alluded to in my last post!  Oh well!

The holidays flew by in a flash and I can't believe that it's already time to head back to work tomorrow (and that I don't have another holiday day off until Memorial day.)  We traveled just over 800 miles - an incredible improvement over last years 1200+ - and were able to relax and spend some quality time at each destination, which was nice. 

Today I "took down Christmas" and when I threw the garland on my living floor, it caught the bright sunlight shining in through our picture window.  I took about a dozen pictures of it, all similar to the one above, and even though it's a little abstract since you can't really tell what it is, I love them.

I'm going to recap a few details of our trip, but nothing extensive.  At this point, it seems so far in the past that it almost doesn't seem worth it, but I have a few great pictures that I'd like to showcase, at the very least.

So, if you missed me (ha!), know that I am officially back now!  And although I'm a day late, Happy New Year!!!

He is a gift

This post should be a rant about how the shipping industry needs to improve their packaging materials, or even better, have more box size options so that a small order doesn't have to be shipped in an inappropriately ginormous box that thus requires tons of packing materials.

But why rant about that?  I did that at home, to myself and I'm over it now. 

I received a package from an Amazon.com order last week and could not believe how much brown crumpled up paper they used to stuff the empty space in the box.  I started pulling it out and quickly realized that it was all one big piece of paper off of a huge roll.  I handed the end to DH and started pulling, and seriously, I could not believe how much paper was in there.

"I feel like we should do something with it," I said casually.

"Let's make me a mummy," DH said.  Then proceeded to post these pictures to his Facebook page, with the album caption "I Am A Gift." 

So he stood up and spun in a circle while I wrapped the paper around him. We had more than enough to go around his body dozens of times.  Then he stood next to the tree and I stuck a bow on him.  How ridiculous, right?

Murph wasn't sure what to think

I think my sister said it best when she said, "It scares me to think that that's what you two do with your spare time." 

It's true. 

White Elephant Extravaganza

Can you believe that Christmas was over 3 weeks ago? My how time flies.... 

On the Friday night before Christmas, Dave and I attended our one and only Christmas party of the season - the Annual White Elephant Extravaganza.

All of the gifts set out on the table

Our gifts were a set of photo coasters (that we filled with randoms photos of ourselves, our dog, and a stove) and a box of plastic leis with a giant bottle of wine.  The "theme" of the wine gift?  "Drink wine and get leid." I think that people liked it.

Our general motto for white elephant parties is to never gift totally useless gifts - we will always give something that is at least moderately valuable to the right person, and we try to make sure that it's universally useful (even if the person who ultimately received it may or may not agree.)  But on the same token, we don't want to give the MOST valuable gift because you will never ever ever come away with anything even remotely as nice.  So, basically we half-ass it, but keep usability in mind. 

Anyway, the hot gift of the night was a $25 American Express gift card - clearly the most valuable gift amongst a lot of random things including two ugly statues, the American Pie DVD, Play-doh, a book, and a frame.  One of the other popular gifts including a live Betta fish with a gift certificate, a bottle of whiskey and our wine gift with the leis. 

Dave was THIS close to getting to keep the whiskey.. but, no such luck.

So what did we walk away with when it was all said and done?  A weird little clock that only lights up when you hit it and make it rock (not the greatest, but certainly not the worst), and THIS t-shirt.

Is there anything more than I can say?  I don't think so.....

Christmas Miles 1020 - 1165: Home Sweet Home

Originally, we thought that we had drive about 1300 miles, which was probably just an estimate rounded up slightly each time, and which also attempted to include all of the little side trips that we made (which are obviously not included in my totals here.)  So, although it seems like we traveled slightly less than 1300 miles in total, trust me when I say that 1200 or so is PLENTY.

Murph was SO excited to be home and in his own yard.

 

And so we were.  It was good to be home.

So, what did we learn from this trip? Well, for one, we definitely don't want to do anything so intense ever again in future years.  What made it so tough?

1. We spent waaaay too much driving.  Our carbon footprint increased to a size 14 in just 7 days. Mother Earth is still crying.

2. We planned for others instead of ourselves.  Sound selfish? Sort of.  But basically we traveled around events that were going on in each respective location instead of trying to just spend quality time when we were there, which is why we did ridiculous things like drive to Wilmington twice, instead of just going there once and spending an extra day at that time.  Driving time is wasted time in my opinion, and it's also wasted money when it's done unnecessarily.  While it's great to be at family gatherings, it can be at the expense of our own personal enjoyment - we had good times each place we went but we were way more exhausted than we should have been. 

3. We tried to do it all.  We basically tried to visit every single family member that wanted to see us.  That's great and all, but it was US driving to THEM and that felt a little one-sided.  Distance between families can be hard, since everyone wants to get together during the holidays, and I think that we need to find a way to become more comfortable with saying, "Sorry but we aren't going to be able to make it."  We have a hard time with that right now, and always try to find a way to make it work, which can make a holiday all the more stressful.

How do you balance it all?  How do you combine your desire to spend the holidays with your family (and in our case, many families) while still enjoying your time off at home?  At first we thought, "Well, if we have kids then we won't be expected to drive as much." But is that really true?  Now that I'm thinking about it, I feel like if we have kids, that will only mean a fuller car since everyone is going to want to see the grandchild/niece/nephew/whatever-it-is.  Am I right in thinking this? 

It's not an easy problem to juggle and I don't think there's an easy solution (if there is, PLEASE comment or message me with details!)

As it stands right now, I think we will continue to play it by ear year to year, but definitely some additional thought into how much driving it will mean for us.  We want to see everyone each year, but we don't want to dread it, which means we need to go easy on ourselves in the future when it comes to planning.  We also don't want to seem whiny - we realize that we're lucky to be close enough to everyone to pull off seeing everyone. But OH! How exhausting it was!

So anyway, that's it! Those were our Christmas miles - each and every one of them!!! 

How was YOUR holiday season?

Christmas Miles 736 - 1019: St. Marys

On the morning of the 28th we packed up the car for our second-to-last destination - my hometown of St. Marys, PA.  We were spending a full day and a half there (which meant sleeping two nights in a row in the same place! Oh how glorious!!!) and we were excited to get some relaxation in - something we felt like we had not yet achieved.  The start of the day was beautiful and we made great time.  We had never made this trip from the direction we were traveling (usually we would take this route FROM St. Marys instead of TO) and Dave thoroughly enjoyed the mountains, rivers, and scenery of central Pennsylvania.

However, once we got onto Interstate 80 it started to snow, and conditions immediately began deteriorating.  We had to slow down considerably, as the roads were snow covered.  It was somewhat treacherous for those last 50 miles or so, but we made it safe and sound and were finally reunited with Murph!!!

He was surprisingly uninterested in us

Actually, that picture is from the next night in St. Marys and not the eve of arrival, but it serves it's purpose nonetheless.  And really, we weren't too surprised to find Murph less than enthusiastic to see us, since my parents probably gave him more love and attention than we even do, and since it's the nature of the Cavalier Spaniel to "love the one you're with."

Anyway, we did get some good relaxation in during our time in St. Marys. We watched two movies - Angels and Demons and the Hangover, and we were SORELY disappointed in the Hangover.  Was it because we were too tired to really enjoy it? Was it because it was too hyped up by others as being the most amazing movie of all time?  We'll never know, but I can honestly say that I don't think either of us laughed out loud once during that entire movie, and that's rare for us and a comedy.

On our second and final night in St. Marys we went to visit my aunt/godmother and uncle.  We had decided to gift them with a picture of us from our wedding, since we had noticed during a visit that summer we were the only ones with a wedding photo NOT prominently featured in the foyer area.  How happy we were to find that we would be the ONLY ONES featured for a short period of time, since the pictures had been removed to allow room for the stable.  They even made space for us inside the stable with baby Jesus.

No caption necessary

Finally, as we were getting ready to leave, we noticed that we were also not featured on their refrigerator, which held dozens of holiday themed pictures.  Apparently we're wildly competitive when it comes to making sure that we receive equal face time in photos featured in prominent places, so my aunt decided that we would take a photo in front of the Christmas tree that could be featured on the fridge-of-honor the next year.

So, all in all, our trip to St. Marys was successful.  Very relaxing with some crazy antics thrown in.  The next morning we packed the car bright and early and started our drive back to Pittsburgh.  We were VERY excited to be heading home....

Christmas Miles 675 - 735: Back to Wilmington

Still with me?  Wow... I'm impressed.... In fact, I can barely believe that I am still me, since reliving this exhausting experience is exhausting in itself.

Anyway, when I last left you, were being sent off with a glorious "wave," as we headed back to Wilmington for a Christmas party.

This particular Christmas party was being held in honor of the girlfriend of the one of Dave's cousins, who traveled all the way from Thailand to be there, and it was a great time.  She was super sweet and I like large family gatherings where you get to catch up with a lot of people all in one place.

I'm going to let this post be picture-heavy, since the photos really do share the story better than I could with words.

A family photo - all of those open mouths are directed at me, and are saying "Hey! You need to be in this!"

Noi, Dave, and two Lisa's

An incredibly cute baby, and Dave's cousin Mike

A group photo before we left

And finally, I save the best for last.  Here's the background story..

You see, Dave's younger brother decided to go away for a mini-honeymoon shortly after Christmas, meaning that he was going to miss this party.  Even though we knew that they were on their "honeymoon" of sorts (I use quotes because they're actually going on their real honeymoon in March, but I'm pretty sure that one is the 3rd or 4th one that they have planned in total) we wanted to show them what fun they were missing.  So, we took and sent them this.

Sorry for the poor picture quality, but it was taken on my phone which has a really weird colored flash.  But doesn't that look like fun!?!?  Wouldn't YOU be sad to realize what fun you were missing if you received this picture??? Needless to say, we did NOT hear from the honeymooners that night, nor did they mention it in any subsequent conversations.  Perhaps because they were so infinitely jealous of the fun that we had?  That's what I'm going to let myself think.

These holiday travels are almost over - but we still have quite a few miles to go!!! Onwards to St. Marys!

Christmas Miles 577 - 674: Delta

fter the White Elephant party, we drove to Dave's dad's house for a brief visit.  We were tired and so were they, so we exchange some (real!) gifts and headed to bed.

The next morning we woke up bright and early and jumped in the hot tub, as has been our custom there recently.  I think it's a sign that we're getting old when we'd rather get in the hot tub in the morning after a good night's sleep over jumping in at night with a beer and then going to bed.... You agree?

The next morning we had a huge breakfast and then talked at the table and caught up on everyone's lives.  It was nice and relaxing... unfortunately, it was cut short by our need to leave to go back to Wilmington for a party that afternoon.

We were attacked by snowballs for leaving, but then they came around, and we got a nice send-off.

Click to enlarge - I swear there are actually waving people in that picture

Then they decided to do a wave!  This next picture is sort of horrible and blurry, but I find it incredibly funny.  You'll see two people in the far bottom left hand corner, and evidence of the wave that took place.

The Wave

At this point, have your found yourself thinking, "Seriously, this isn't over yet?"  Sorry, no such luck.  Stay tuned.

Christmas Miles 456 - 576: Maryland White Elephant

On the morning of the 26th we ate breakfast and then headed off to Gaithersburg, MD for a White Elephant gift exchange party at Dave's half-sister's house.

The rest of this post has been removed....

Christmas Miles 157 through 455: Wilmington, DE

Our Christmas Day drive to Wilmington was an exciting and stressful one.  The weather was horrible.  There was freezing rain and wind so violent that I was actually afraid that the car might blow over.  Dave was driving, and even in the passenger sheet, I could feel the effects of the wind on the car, and I saw how much he had to struggle to control it just to keep it on the road.

On top of that, the fog was denser than I've seen.  On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there are mile markers every 1/10th of a mile.  In addition to that, there are 5 mini-mile markers between each 1/10th mile marker (so, basically a marker every 2/100ths of a mile - 105.6 feet, according to Dave.)  As we passed one 2/100ths of a mile marker, we could not see the next one - that's how foggy it was.  There was a car about 4/100ths of a mile ahead of us, and we never saw it unless the driver tapped the breaks.  We were going 35 mph at some points and it was awful.

Fortunately though, there was very little traffic on the turnpike and literally no congestion.  We still made decent time - less than 6 hours total, including rest stops, and arrived at Dave's mom's house by 5:30 p.m.

We had a few drinks, played a ping-pong tournament (Dave and I were both eliminated in the first round) and then opened gifts. 

A thoughtful look on the face of the elder Hartman

Are those canned goods that I received?  Why yes! They are!

I set up our air mattress in a little room off of the living room, since it was a full house.  Unfortunately, it had been raining all day, and when we went to bed, we learned that the roof was leaking right next to our bed.  We put a bucket with a towel underneath it but I was still going crazy from the noise, so we were forced to move the air mattress into the living room, which is always sad for me, since it means that we're the last ones to go to sleep and the first ones to have to wake up.  Needless to say, neither Dave nor I got a good night's sleep that night and it sort of left us at a deficit for the rest of the trip. 

But either way, Christmas Day was over and we had more driving to do the next day!

Christmas Miles 145 - 156: The North Side

On Christmas morning we packed the car and headed to my sister's house.  A mere 12 miles away, this was by far the easiest drive of the trip.  We had already exchanged our gifts the night before, and my family had carted away the larger gifts that were going to be opened this morning, and yet we still had a packed car.  So much so that Murphy had to sit on my lap, which he was absolutely thrilled to do.

For some reason I forgot to take pictures of this morning, but that is not to say that it wasn't a great time.

Dave received his brand-spanking new laptop, which was a joint gift from me, my parents, my older sister, and Dave's mom.  He was very excited about it, and thrilled at the level of coordination required on my part to keep it a surprise.

Let me explain.

You see, Dave had a list of "wants" that weren't particularly exciting.  However, I wanted him to get the things that he needed, while also getting a few surprises (I love surprises, and apparently I think that other people should too.)  So, I coordinated the joint laptop among everyone so that they could still buy him a little something else.  I also had it shipped to my place of employment instead of at home, so that he wouldn't see it in the driveway (since he is usually the first one home.)  Even then, I still told him not to look at the boxes of the gifts that were delivered, to keep him on his toes, and since I was coordinated the gifts for ALL of our family members - mine and his.  All he had to worry about was a gift for me (which I'm pretty sure he still struggled with.)

The other gift that took some significant coordination was a filing cabinet that his Dad and step-mom ordered for him. Since it was a big gift, they had it shipped to our house, but that meant that I had to be home to accept the delivery.  It was being delivered by a full-sized tractor trailer, which is ridiculous in itself.  Furthermore, I had to coordinate the delivery on my cell phone while in the car with him on the way to his brother's wedding.  Fortunately I had that following Monday off already and was able to be there (even though it arrived 3 hours later than the 4 hour window that they had given me - I literally wasted an entire day off waiting around for this thing.)

Anyway, the delivery guy parked his 18-wheeler in the middle of our road, lugged this enormous thing up the driveway and pushed it in the back of our garage.  I promptly covered it with a sheet, put a "Dave - stay away!" sign on it and pushed a lot of crap in front of it.  He was intrigued but stayed away, and I don't think that he ever guessed what it was.

So anyway, we had a good Christmas. In addition to the laptop, Dave received a sweater, a pair of jeans, a snorkel set for our Mexico trip (which I also received), some stocking stuffers and a 4-waffle iron.   I got a new black pea coat, jeans, two sweaters, a heart-rate monitor, snorkel set, and an I-pod nano! We definitely made out.

But two and a half hours after arriving at my sister's, we had to leave Murphy behind with my mom and head on to the next leg of our journey - Wilmington, DE.

Christmas Mile 144: Christmas Eve at our house

The one event we did not have to travel for was the Christmas Eve gathering at our house with my immediate family.

As soon as we arrived home from skiing I started cooking.  We had planned a low-key, appetizer-based event, but on the drive home from 7 Springs decided to incorporate potato skins in our menu, something that I had never made before, but knew that they took a lot of time.

In the end, we're glad that we decided to make the potato skins, since my family came hungry, even though they knew there wouldn't be a formal dinner.  We made: potato skins, fried flatbread with fresh spinach and artichoke dip, and soft pretzels with cheese and honey mustard dip.  My sister also brought shredded pork and rolls, which ended up being the "meal" portion of the evening.

Then, in our effort to cut down on the number of gifts that we had to transport, we convinced my niece to open her gifts that night at our house.  She received Dog Park Barbie.

And a Sponge Bob Connect Four.

Which Santa ALSO brought, even though I TOLD Santa in an e-mail that I had purchased that for her

We were really glad that she opened her gifts then, since she really enjoyed getting them and since on Christmas morning, there's always so much going on, that she doesn't even realize or get excited about some of the things that she receives.

We also enlisted her help in opening Murphy's gifts.  Murph is one lucky dog!  He received an enormous bag of dog treats and a new fleece for his bed!

Sniff sniff... what are those???

This is SO much better than an old, crappy towel!

After gifts, the party wound down, and we loaded some of the larger gifts into my family members vehicles since our car was already going to be packed to the brim and we didn't think we would be able to fit everything (that turned out to be true.) 

As is our tradition, Dave and I decided to exchange gifts that night.  He gave me a piece of abstract art for above our bed (something that I asked for), a collage frame for our basement family room wall, and a rawhide.  I'm still not sure why he wrapped the rawhide and gave it to me, obviously that was passed on to Murphy.  If you ever want to see instinct at it's best, give a dog a bone and observe.

He walked around trying to find a place to bury that thing for nearly an hour

After presents, we went to sleep.  After all, we had a big day and the bulk of our traveling ahead of us!

Christmas Miles 0 - 144: To Seven Springs and Back

As I mentioned previously, we did a lot of driving over the Christmas.  I've decided to chronicle those adventures by tracing our miles to recap our travels (and I promise I'll finish with the Hartman brother wedding recaps soon after.)

Our holiday started on Wednesday, December 23rd, when we traveled to 7 Springs for an overnight ski trip.  Dave had already planned a January one-day trip with his brothers, but part of the fun of skiing for me is staying in the lodge, but trying to coordinate that with a group of people has proven to be a pain in the ass, so we decided to do our own little get away.  We took advantage of the last day of their pre-season rates, and got an amazing deal on an overnight package.

We upgraded to a king bed, slopeside room and this was the view we got when we arrived.

Totally awesome

Lift tickets for skiing that night were included in our package, but we decided to skip the night skiing and rest up for the next day.  "Resting up" meant having a nice big dinner and quite a few drinks before calling it a night.

We watched skiers and "drank" everytime one fell.  Sadly, most people who do night skiing are pretty good, so even though we were looking exclusively at black diamond slopes, we saw very few falls.

The view of the main lodge when out on the balcony

We rearranged our room to provide ourselves with viewing comfort

It was also during this trip that Dave decided to start growing a beard.  Here is a picture of Day 1. You will see subsequent days in the upcoming posts.

The next morning we rose early for our free breakfast, and we realized that preparing for skiing is quite a time investment.  Since we didn't ski the night before, we still had to rent out skis that morning.  And, since it was already 9 a.m. by the time we were done with breakfast - and since we had to be out of the hotel by 11 - we needed to basically get completely dressed and pack the car to check out before skiing.  So, we didn't actually get to hit the slopes until 10 a.m., but all of the time investment was worth it because it was PERFECT skiing weather.

On the lift

Blue skies, plenty of snow, and temperatures that were just below freezing, which meant no snow making! (I HATE skiing during snow making...)  There were almost no skiers there, probably since most people were still at work, and nearly every slope and lift was open, which meant absolutely no lines at the lifts, and no pile-ups at the intersections of slopes.

Sidenote: When Dave whipped out my cell phone to take the picture you see above, I was scared to death that it was going to be the end of my new Droid.  Fortunately, that was not the case.

We skied until about 3:30, which was way earlier than we had planned on leaving, but we had both skied so much and so hard (given the ideal conditions) that we were absolutely exhausted, and we both felt like we had gotten more than our money's worth out of the experience, so it was well worth it.

A daytime shot from the balcony

Up next: Christmas Eve party at our house!

Lights!!!

On Sunday we also put up on Christmas lights.  Know that this happened at my insistence, since if it was up to Dave we wouldn't have any lights at all.  But when I said that I would just do it myself, he quickly jumped in, since things that I do myself (with the exception of installing room-darkening blinds nearly two years ago) usually go poorly.

Putting up the lights became an adventure in itself since it included my first visit to the roof of our house.  While I would not consider myself to "be afraid of heights," I am also smart enough to not feel comfortable on a rickety wooden ladder that requires me to have to stand on the very top step (marked "DO NOT STAND ON THIS STEP!") and THEN to have to literally hoist myself using mostly sheer momentum.  Dave - who might be part billy-goat when it comes to navigating dangerous cliffs and heights - hopped up with confidence and was probably more afraid of my seemingly impending death than I was.

That being said, I have no pictures of my roof experience - I was definitely not climbing back down just to get a camera.

So, after a few disappointments (i.e. the first string of lights that worked when we tested them on the ground suddenly failed once on the roof) the lights were up, and we sad to see that the string didn't reach along the stretch of the house.  Oh well, we decided that people would just think that we only wanted to light the actual "house" part of the house (instead of including the porch as well.)

Sadly these pictures aren't very good

The pine tree with lights to the right of the house was the original object of our Christmas light affection.  It was so hard to get those lights in that tree that we just leave them in year-round now.  Yep, we're those people.  Each year we run the extension cord and cross our fingers that they'll light.  So far, so good.  In fact, those lights have held up better than the ones we've stored in our garage, which makes me think that maybe we should just leave ALL of our lights outside year round...

The ever-lit pine tree

And finally, a shot of the house from across the street. 

Oddly enough, it doesn't look that impressive in this picture.  But trust me - when you're driving down our dark and twisty tree-line road, our house seems like a beacon of bright light coming out of the fog!!!  As we are literally the only house with lights of any kind and one of the only houses that is directly on the road, we stand out like a light-house.

And while it was quite a bit of work, I love it.