Wow, it's been a jam-packed couple of days, filled with family and food and friends from outta town and puppies and presents and lots of driving!
We had Christmas at three different houses this year! On Christmas eve, we spent the night at Todd's parents place. We woke up to snow on Christmas morning, ate amazing cinnamon rolls for breakfast, opened our gifts (in addition to helping us pay for Gotham, his parents gave us lots of fabulous stuff for our fireplace, plus Glee soundtracks, house shoes and TOMS, etc.) We were also very entertained by the puppies; Gotham (who will be 8 weeks this wednesday), Roxie (a 6 year old boxer) and Emma (a 2 year old micro-shih-tzu, who didn't want a single thing to do with Gotham). Gotham and Roxie got along great and wore each other out. Gotham also learned how to go down the stairs (video to come!) and didn't have a single accident outside on the day after Christmas! Yay! Definite progress.
Christmas afternoon, we bundled up and went off to the Grandparents house, where we ate a hearty lunch, gave Gotham a piece of ham because we left his food at home, played Rock Band 2, watched UP, and then ate dinner. In between all of that, Todd and I slipped out to visit the home and family of one of his college roommates. We took Gotham with us and when we arrived, we were met by two more puppies (Ruby, an 8 week old black lab, and Lucy, a 7 week old yellow lab) and a dog (Barkley, a 6 year old chocolate lab). SO many puppies. Gotham loved it even though Ruby sort of beat him up (a la Nala v. Simba).
We had company Sunday afternoon and Saturday evening as well! (Gotham's starting to get excited whenever unfamiliar-smelling people come over.) Two of Todd's groomsmen and their wives came into town for Christmas from Nashville and Chicago. We had Mike and Amanda over for frito pie and met Scott and (a different) Amanda for brunch at Benton Park Cafe. (It had snowed the night before and the roads weren't clear yet, so we also managed to slide into three different curbs on our seven-minute journey there.) But it was really nice catching up with them.
Then last night, we drove back over to Illinois with Gotham in tow to visit Todd's cousins who live on a farmhouse in Worden, IL. Cool family. The dad re-built the whole house/lodge himself, first cutting the old house in half with a chainsaw, then rebuilding the front half in one year, and the back half the next year. The house looks like an ad for Pottery Barn: Lodge Edition, including a giant, 20 foot tall fireplace, made exclusively of hand-picked, hand-washed river rocks from a neighbors' creek bed, sitting atop 40,000lbs of concrete and a built-in blower that heats the entire house. The two daughters (15 & 13) are absolutely adorable. They also barrel race in rodeos, shoot coyotes, catch giant disgusting fish (and gut them too, no doubt), received cows for Christmas last year and rifles this year, and have mounted deer heads in the house. Never before have a met I beautiful little porcelain-looking 13 year old, asked her what her favorite food was only to hear "Deer" as her answer. Not venison. Deer.
It's a different world.
That night, we ate an fantastic meal that included lasagna, made with ground beef from from one of their own cows. Ah. Mazing. Also, right before dinner, they brought one of their pet goats in the house. They said his name was Cupid because he was born on Valentine's Day.
In short: never has there been a Christmas quite like this one :) I wouldn't trade it for anything.
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