Christmas Weekend Recap

I can't believe Christmas 2011 has already come and gone. I got the stomach flu last week for the first time since I was a little girl. I can't believe how incredibly awful it was. I'm talking every last flu symptom you can think of, including a fever. I was miserable. It sort of put the damper on Christmas in general since I didn't actually leave my house from Tuesday through Friday of last week. It's hard to feel festive when you're hanging out with the toilet.

We spent Christmas Eve with the Blankenheim side of the family. Mass was at 4:30pm and was said by the same priest who married us. He never fails to make Mass fun and to keep it a bit lively. After that we headed to Mike's grandma's house for a meal of appetizers - the best kind. Unfortunately, I was still feeling the ill effects of the stomach flu and didn't do too much eating. After a couple hours there, we headed over to Ray and Nancy's house (Mike's parents) for the gift exchange.

Christmas morning Mike and I spent with Shadow. This dog loves to open presents. He'll lick them, tear little pieces of paper off and generally work the whole thing over. Over the years, he's actually learned to pick out which ones are his under the tree and he stalks them until Christmas. Anything treat related has to go in his stocking because otherwise he'd open everything!

Shadow Opening Presents

I decided to give it one more go with the stuffed animal thing. Everyone else's dogs have cute little things that they carry around and I wanted my dog to have one too. He played with it for about ten minutes before the disembowelment began. And by disembowelment, I mean he flipped it over and basically gutted the stuffing.

Disembowelment

We decided that since we were watching, he could do it just this once (since I normally take them away at this point. He seriously took every little piece of stuffing out. The funny part is that now he carries around and snuggles with the "pelt". I guess my dog likes his toys without stuffing after all!

After opening our presents, we headed over to Mom and Dad's for the Christmas festivities with my side of the family. They made a fantastic prime rib dinner with all sorts of sides and a ton of desserts. Unfortunately, again due to tummy issues, I pretty much stuck to mashed potatoes and green beans. Mike sampled everything (including Mom's Yorkshire pudding) and said it was pretty yummy! That said, I did bring some fudge home and was finally able to sample some tonight... as always, no one makes fudge like my mama! We opened our presents, hung out for a while and had dinner. It was great!

Today we headed out to a ranch in Ione to go target shooting. Sounds odd, I know. One of the gifts that the family got Raymond was a gun similar to the one he carried in Vietnam (the legal civilian version, of course) and he wanted to try it out. We were also given a rifle for our wedding (it has our name and wedding date engraved on it too!) and my dad brought a bunch of the guns that my grandpa had given him. One of them is a rifle that was made in 1900... it was beautiful and still fires like a dream! We had a blast shooting at buckets and stumps!

I Still Like The Shotgun Better!

Check out my Facebook page for more pictures... it was a great time! All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas, I just wish Mike and I were both feeling better (he's fighting a cold). We were spoiled by our families and had a fantastic time!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!