purple room vents: EARLY CHRISTMAS

Its early early and I am sitting all by myself in my incredibly messy living room in the dark. We had a xmas explosion last night! There is no other way to put it!!!

I don't remember where I left off but I guess it doesn't really matter. This last week has been busy getting ready for this busy weekend. Cleaning, prepping, cooking, baking, wrapping, trips to the grocery store. And then after all that I forgot to take the turkey out of the freezer until midnight last night! Fortunately I don't stuff it. I do the stuffing in the crock pot so it doesn't really matter. You can cook a turkey from totally frozen if need be, but I actually never have.

April and Myles arrived Thursday night and we had a lovely evening sitting around, snacking on a chicken soup I made just before they came and visiting. Peter has gone to Vancouver for a few days. I miss him. Especially early in the morning when he would come up and we would solve the world's problems over a cup of coffee. But Monte was up super early and April came upstairs so it was the three of us sitting around and gabbing over coffee.

Ape and I went shopping all morning. We went to Nesguards...the nursery/market place we have been to before. And we discovered upon going through a certain door there, a room with probably over fifty decorated full sized xmas trees. Each tree was jammed full of ornaments, each tree with its own theme and totally beautiful. We spent quite a bit of time in there just looking at each tree. Amazing!

When we got home with all the necessary groceries we started prepping for the evenings food. Spinach dip, spring rolls, samosas, crab filled cucumber thingies, dry garlic ribs, chips and salsa, pickles, olives and booze booze booze! Then we sat around and impatiently waited for Bradley and Aryn.

We ate first then the present explosion! What wonderful gifts!!! We always get our pile then, starting with the youngest, go around and open one present at a time. And the presents this year were plentiful and perfect. We laughed and laughed and laughed til our poor stomachs couldn't take it anymore!!! After the presents we played jenga and 80's trivia. Bradley, a tad three sheets to the wind was so funny! What a guy!

I got some amazing, and tons, of presents. April and Myles gave me the most beautiful jug/pitcher. I will take a pic rather than try to describe it. So beautiful! And Aryn and Bradley gave me two trays. I had a tray on my wish list. Wait til you see the pics of them! One is, or was, a window at one time! And the other one is a gorgeous silver shimmery varnished one...stunning! And then a ton of other things, including my obligatory bag of bridge mix from Arnie. The living room looks like a bomb hit it!

So today is turkey day. And like Aryn pointed out last night, limping our way to bed, we ain't on any schedule, it doesn't matter how late we eat so we can enjoy what the day brings and eat when its ready, no matter the time. The only thing that must happen is I need to pick up the roast for tomorrow night's dinner.

One thing I must mention here. As I have said before, I have basically just let Wrangler kind of teach me what his routines are and what he knows how to do etc. This is kind of necessary when you rescue an old dog.

Well in the bottom of the xmas tree bag, the stinky one, I found an unwrapped little present for Molly from Elise and Fenton. Somehow it just got passed by and I have no idea how many xmases ago that was.

On a whim I gave it to Wrangler, and he gently took the wrapped gift in his mouth. He then put the present on the floor, immediately put a paw on it to anchor it, and quite delicately and methodically tore the paper off of that present, bit by bit! Clearly he had done this before and judging by his excitement before I gave him a gift, when he saw all the activity and presents, he was quite excited. And the moment I gave him that present, he knew exactly what to do! And inside was a bag of doggie treats! We opened it up and he got his treats! It was quite something.

So I have pics of all this and later I will get them onto the lappy and put some on here and share our early xmas eve with you. TTYL