Catnip is a gateway drug

We went to an eggnog party last night at Ryan and Ashley's. We played Rabbids and looked at their beautiful tree and watched Rudolf.
When we came home, it looked like someone else had been hitting the 'nog pretty hard around here. This is the Christmas tree the way we found it. Notice anything missing?
That's right. No angel. No angel on top of our 7' tree. Where there used to be one. A pretty one. Also, the Christmas tree skirt was missing and there were an outrageous number of needles all over the floor. What happened? Were we robbed? Did the angel have to fight?
This is how we found her...
Poor angel! What did she do to deserve that? Who could've knocked her off the top of the tree and taken the tree skirt?
Suspect #1:

Suspect #2:We caught Georgie this morning trying to light a little bonfire under the tree. She said it was "too cold up in here". Brats. I suspect the angel was making them feel guilty about whatever they were up to while we were gone, and she paid the price. too much nog. Or was it catnip?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Wait a second. Is that a snowflake? On the Tucson forecast? As in snow? Frozen water falling from the sky? wow.
We've seen mountain snow for a few days. They're saying that Mt. Lemmon is going to get 14 inches tonight. Won't that be pretty! The snow line is moving further and further down toward town. It's raining here now. All dark and gloomy and wintery like.
Update: It's sleeting! The cats are slinking around all scared of the "pink pinkity pink" going on outside!

December

The wind is howling around our house and it's still raining. The house is nice and chilly and I think we'll have soup for dinner. Oh how I wish the weather would stay nice and wintry.

Drip Drip drip

Oh Atlanta, I wish I could send some of this your way. We woke up this morning to hear the steady dripping of rain. I absolutely love this sound and I never get to hear it since we moved to this desert. Oh man, there's no better way to wake up. And it's still raining!

And also:

Wow. Thanks Mrs. Haury. We're having a big ceremony tomorrow with a formal dinner to announce the gift and thank Agnese Haury. With this gift, we'll be able to build a new archive building to house the thousands of tree-ring samples that are currently stuffed in the store rooms under the stadium. They'll finally be climate controlled and ventilated. This lab has been waiting for new headquarters since 1937. This building won't be headquarters, but it will move our most precious and vulnerable artifacts into a place where they'll be safe. They'll be organized and preserved so we can continue to use them. Some of the samples up in the Lab attic were collected by Douglass himself. I love when I'm looking for a specific piece of wood from a particular pueblo and I find it in a box, neatly labeled with a real ink pen. The neat little initials in faded ink say "A.E.D". It makes me feel like I'm a part of a long tradition. I'm really lucky to be at the tree-ring lab, and we're really lucky to have such a generous benefactress.

Front Door fun

I know. I know. It isn't even December. I'm not nuts, I just like lights, that's all.
We put together this little wreath the other day. It's a regular old plastic wreath with bendy branches. We wrapped a string of big ceramic lights around it, did some clever extension cord work and voila! Big, bright, cheery front porch!I may have also put up some lights in our room... Just one strand. and that's it. And two bows. But seriously, it's too early. that's it.

Christmas idea #1

The turkey is barely gone, but can I talk a little about Christmas?
I like to make my own Christmas decorations as much as I can. I have fun doing it, and I like to have something that's a little unique.
Here's the first thing we've made for this Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving, Rob's mom and I were sitting in front of a movie making these little guys.We took small pieces of red felt and cut out two bird shapes. Then, we embroidered flowers, wings, and star designs on the sides. Sometimes we added a few beads for the eyes or for the middle of flowers. When both sides were decorated, we sewed the two sides together and stuffed the birds with cotton balls. When we ran out of cotton balls, we just used the scraps of felt. When we sewed the seam shut, we added a little piece of green ribbon to the top of each one to hang it by. We made seven in all. We think they look kind of Scandinavian. What do you think? I have a short stand of red wooden garland from the grocery store ($1.99 tops). I attached the birds here and there along the garland and hung the whole thing over the window in the dining room.
It was an easy, inexpensive, and fun thing to make together.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had much to be thankful for on Thursday. Grandma, Jeanne, Doug, Charlie, Bob, Patty, Tommy, and Dana were all here with us to help celebrate. Isn't it wonderful to have a house full of people you love? We also had a lot of delicious food to be thankful for. Eight pies (that's close enough to the five pie limit, give me a break) and a huge pan full of stuffing.
Oh man, though. Thursday morning gave us a real test of gratitude. We got up early (not exactly as early as we meant to, but hey, it's a holiday) to prep the bird. My biggest worry was that Tom would still be frozen on the inside. HA! We got the bird out and unwrapped him and put him in the sink to wash. But the water wasn't draining. No big deal, I thought, we sometimes have a hard time with our stone age plumbing. However, a half hour of plunging did no good at all. Precious turkey time was ticking by. Poor Rob was up to his elbows in yucky sink water when all of a sudden dirt and gravel comes shooting out of the drain. Holy shit! Turns out our minor plumbing problem is much bigger than we thought. Then, "ding dong!" the family arrives from the hotel hungry for breakfast. I could've cried, but wonderful Rob just laughed and went to run interference. We ended up washing the bird in the bathtub like a big, cold, slimy baby. We even stuffed it while it was in the bathtub. Then, all the uncles went out back to sort out the sink issue. I think they were kind of having fun doing it, at one point they had out wrenches and hoses and beer. At least two of them were on the roof. They eventually rigged some sort of system where the water drained elsewhere and the sink was usable. Phew.
So, the turkey went in at least two hours late, but the rest of the preparations were mostly drama-free. Here's a little video of grandma making the lattice on the cherry pies. Nice work, Grandma!

Here's the whole gang beginning to enjoy dinner. It's funny how it takes all week to get ready for this dinner and it only takes just a short time to eat it. We ate lots of helpings and really made it last. Then, we ate at least three slices of pie each and passed out. Ahhh. This is the best holiday ever.