Hungry Charlie

I feel like I have to share this with the world because I think it is the cutest thing EVER. When Charlie is hungry, he always sits up on the very top step of the basement stairs, and peeks through the door, SO PATIENTLY waiting for some dinner. He's never demanding at all, he just quietly sits there, HOPING that we notice him and give him some food!! Meanwhile, Emma will be hunting us down and stomping all over the place, yapping and squawking until we feed her.



LOOOOOOOOOK AT him.



Seriously. Is that not the cutest thing ever? He is SO patient and sweet.

Christmas 2011

Merry Christmas!! Ben joined me for stockings up at my parents house this morning. We were teasing Kate by telling her that before we opened any presents, we all had LOTS of things we needed to get done first, and some of us might even take naps, etc. In fact, it would probably be AWHILE before we got to open ANY presents. She was super concerned about it.



But then we said "Just kidding! Let's go!"



Kate got to distribute all the stockings.






She helped with some of the unwrapping, too!



Stockings!



Mom got Christmas Dots!



Mer and Pete always have the coolest wrapping paper.



After stockings, we were all super hungry. We decided to take a break for breakfast. Although Kate kept insisting that she was NOT hungry and could totally just continue on with the present opening, she happily switched gears once we got into the kitchen. We made french toast!



The best french toast in the WORLD because we used Mer's famous homemade cinnamon bread.



Griddle patrol!



Look at all of that french toast! Yay!



I was in charge of the powdered sugar.



Meanwhile, Dad was cooking up sausage!!



The sausage comes from our friend Chuck's farm and it is the best!! It's so lean and flavorful.



A complete breakfast!



Yum!



Once we were done with breakfast, Ben headed out to his Mom's and the rest of us headed back to the living room for more presents!



Mer got cupcake hats for Mom and I, and Mom got a cupcake hat for Mer! TRIPLETS!!! Mom is vanilla, I am red velvet, and Mer is chocolate!



Eventually I made it out to Cheryl's to join Ben. Then we all headed to Vana's for Christmas Dinner! There was a huge, fresh salad.



Cheryl made two kinds of lasagna!



Mmm, a giant mountain of garlic bread.



Time to dish up!






YUM!!



Cheryl made a grape pie for dessert. It was awesome!



I have no idea who took this picture of Dennis, but I like it.



Merry Christmas, folks!

Christmas Eve

Ben and I headed over to Mer and Pete's tonight for some Christmas Eve merriness. We made the same mojitos we had on Thanksgiving because they were SO GOOD! Cheers!! Delicious yet again.



Mer made some AWESOME clam chowder. It was seriously delicious. Mmm, with some buttery sourdough bread!



And of course, cookies! Everyone brought all the cookies they've been making, and we combined them!



It's always hard to choose which shape you want to eat.



Kate picked a cat!



Uncle Mark picked a plane! Duh!



And Dad picked a guitar! Double duh! I guess sometimes it's NOT hard to pick. Uh, no pun intended?!



After dinner, Ben and I headed back to our house for a cozy Christmas Eve at home.



Our Christmas tree!



We decided to exchange presents! Yay, presents!!!



Okay, time to get to bed before Santa heads our way.

Christmas Eve Eve at the Cabin

This year, we had the traditional Cabin Christmas Eve celebration on Christmas Eve Eve, because Vana had to work on Christmas Eve. It was exciting to get the fun rolling even earlier than usual! Dennis had the place all ready for us.



The super, DUPER exciting thing about this year was that Dennis just finished his new addition! Before, there was an indoor toilet for urination purposes only, but if you had to do anything more serious than that, the outhouse was your only option. BUT NOW, there is a brand new bathroom with a TOILET FOR POOPING!! POOPING INSIDE!!! And a really awesome stove that produces a ton of heat. Enough to heat water for the bathtub!! Hot tub!! I am proud to announce that I got to christen the bathroom. It really was quite the honor!



Time to eat! Dennis made his famous chipotle dip.



He also experimented with making pizza on the new stove!! I thought this pizza was AMAZING, but I guess he used to make pizzas a lot and said that this one wasn't quite what he had hoped. So he plans to experiment with the process, which means we'll get to eat more pizza in the future to help him with his studies! YAY!



I made another big batch of gingerbread cookies.






We also had some Avalanche pizzas and a giant salad!



We played "Werewolf" late into the night and it was sort of a disaster, but ultimately lots of fun.

Puppies and Trees!

Ben, Kayla and I headed out to Cheryl's house tonight to help trim the tree! It was the cutest lil' tree ever.



I finally got to meet Cheryl's new puppy, Bambini!! She's so cute that it's hard to believe she's real!



Ben and his beard got to spend some quality time with Tinkerbelle.






The finished product! Yay, Christmas!