• Ok, McCain’s speech isn’t the shot out of the park that Palin delivered last night, but its a good solid double off the wall… #

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• Its cold @ the rock #
• Holy crap its cold #
• At work on christmas eve. Database rebuilds suck!! #
• The building makes weird noises when no one else is working… #

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Some of you might have noticed (if you visit the blog regularly anyways) the new duds. I’ve been working on this design for about a week with a designer and I had some free time today so I decided to go ahead and begin getting it all setup correctly. The main features of the blog are working (some even better than before) and others are not quite there yet.

Please bear with me, as its going to be a learning experience with 2.3 (the last time i worked heavily on a theme was in the 1.5 days!). If you notice something that needs improvement let me know.

Thanks and merry christmas!

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Saturday night was our annual Christmas Dinner party where we have some friends over, drink a lot and eat a lot. Everyone started arriving around 6:30pm and by the time we sat down to dinner at 7:30, the group had gone through two and a half bottles of wine I had received from the wine clubs. We had two bottles open a red and a white and people loved both of them. It was an easy way o find some good tasting wine that everyone could enjoy. It also helped that the wine was accompanied by a new letter with suggestions and other tips and information about the wines themselves.

We cracked open a third bottle as dinner began and sat down to an excellent feast of pot roast, green beans, rice, gravy, squash and a veggie lasagna (gruntled is a veggie…) and proceeded to feast on roast beast until it was all gone. Its amazing how quickly a FIVE POUND RUMP ROAST can disappear. I cooked it following my father-in-law’s recipe. Friday night, I stuffed the roast with cloves of garlic and rubbed it down with Tony’s seasoning and then covered it in olive oil. Stuck that sucker in the fridge to marinate over night. Saturday afternoon, I put it in a large pot in the oven @ 400 for an hour, then knocked it down to 350 for the remaining time. The thing fell a part on your plate it was that good.

Next time I’m going to have to get a larger cut of meat so I have leftovers. We had fruit, brownies and pumpkin cheese cake (thanks rach!) for desert and kept drinking and eating until about 1:30am and despite the rain, several of us ventured out in to the cold to enjoy a soak in the hot tub. Its amazing how long you can go when there aren’t any kids around to chase after. Once I get some of the photos uploaded, I’ll at least show how good the table looked before we sat down to destroy it. Hope you all have a merry christmas!

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There’s something about being two that turns the vision of santa from fairytale to nightmare as quickly turning on a light switch. We took the girls to see santa last Tuesday night at the mall and the whole time we were in line waiting (an hour and a half) Emma was her usual self. Happy, angry, munchin down on the cookies and crackers. The time went fairly quickly (I took the girls to play in the mall while amy stood in line…) and before you know it it was our turn.

Grace had no problem. She loved it. She likes the idea of being able to tell this guy what she wants for Christmas and poof. Magically on Christmas morning she wakes up and she has the stuff (if only it were truly that easy). Of course, she’s had her turn being afraid of him before, but now she likes him and ANY time we go somewhere where Santa is, she has to go up and see him. I don’t know why, she just likes the guy and trusts him. I guess thats the way it should be with Santa. She told the Big Guy what she wanted for Christmas (no its not weight benches or anything like that, she wants makeup, a stuffed seal from macy’s and an ariel wig), so we’ll see what she gets.

Mose on the other hand, FREAKED out when I carried her up to Mr. C. and sat her on his lap next to Grace. I don’t know what it is, but something about being two just causes children to dislike Santa. Grace was the same way and so were countless other little children at the mall that night. Santa really must have the patient of a saint in order to sit in his big comfy chair and take photo after photo with screaming little kids. I don’t think I could do it. We got a photo of the two of them though, and like it or not, Emms is screaming her head off.

Oh well, maybe next year.

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