Holiday Greetings

Happy holidays from Highlands, North Carolina!

After a great week at home with my family, Nurse A and I packed up the pupster and all our homemade gifts (we got an adorable ornament, cookies and home-brewed winter lager from my brother and his fiance; venison from my sister and her husband; fish from my grandpa; and tons of the pottery my stepfather makes) and drove to his family's lakehouse in Alabama Christmas night. We finally arrived in Highlands yesterday, after a treacherous (to me) drive up the mountain. It snowed all night last night and is beautiful today!

Sawyer loves snow and can't be bothered with posing.

We have a warm house

and beer

Really, what else could you need? Wishing you all warm and safe holidays! Better holiday recap to come.

P.S.--A certain labrahound got caught in a (sticky) mousetrap his first night in the Highlands house, definitely one of my top five favorite Sawyer moments so far. The sticky stuff came off his paw easily with hand soap, though.

The Dogs of Christmas

It's officially Christmastime! With less than a week left, I've packed up and headed home to the coast, hence the blogging hiatus. So far we've eaten some delicious food (think French toast, homemade chicken tortilla soup and curried chicken), braved the crowds for some last minute Christmas shopping (even though I'm just giving free Shutterfly cards this year because of my lack of funds) and had a beer or two with my cousins and aunt downtown. We've also had lots of sweets and a couple morning runs, one on which we saw a girl in a pink coat standing in the woods--quite creepy. Fun times though. Oh, and we also have five dogs packed into our house. Chaotic? Yes. Extremely entertaining? Hellz yes. (Except when Sawyer gets up at 7 a.m. and wakes all the other dogs.) I don't have my card reader with me right now, but here are a few photos I have on hand of our the four-legged members of our family. Please keep in mind that I am sharing a twin bed with three of them.

It's baby Sawyer's first time visiting his grandmother. So far he has enjoyed chicken broth and the sauteed ground beef on his food, courtesy of my madre.

Izzy, my brother's fiance's adorable Boston terrier. Sawyer and Izzy are bff.



My brothr's dog Rosco Bosco the gentle giant.



Joli, the Fun Police. If anyone has a toy, she takes it and rips it up. If anyone is playing, she jumps in and tries to start a fight. We just pick her up because she's a small-yet-rotund rat terrier. She was a birthday gift to me when I was 17, but I think it's safe to say she is my mom's dog now even though she always sleeps with me and we love each other.

Coco (on the left) with Joli. I don't have a picture of just Coco because she's so sweet and always behaving and I apparently just photograph bad dogs. Also, no one in our family is quite sure if she spells her name Coco or Cocoa. Because it's her choice, obviously. Coco is Joli's bff even though Joli is kind of mean to her.

So that's what I've been up to! It's nice to be home. Nurse A is still up in North Mississippi working, so we won't get to see him until Christmas Eve. Then we'll pack up the car and Sawyer, Andrew and I will head off to North Carolina to spend the week after Christmas with his family in Highlands, NC. Safe travels everyone, and happy holidays!

Rolling in the Dough

I am not, in fact, rolling in the dough. Which is why I started rolling (errr, kneading) my own dough--bread dough, to be exact. It changed my life. That is all.

I used this recipe and threw in a couple tablespoons of herbs. I can't wait to (re) try whole wheat with honey! (I realized my first rock-hard, whole wheat loaf was a failure when I gave a slice to Sawyer and it took him like 10 minutes to chew it.)

Sawyer really likes flour.