Christmas Movies

In the past few days we have seen and abnormally high ratio of movies for us. It's not that we don't like watching movies but for some reason we're never able to as much as we'd like. Part of the problem is that when we rent a movie and I get all comfortable on the couch and ready to watch, I usually fall asleep in about 20 minutes. We try to get out and go to the movies but something always seems to come up that prevents us from going.

I decided weeks ago that on Christmas Day, I wanted to see Marley and Me and Andrew agreed. We got the book a few years back and started to read it, but never finished. I figured the movie would be cute even though I already knew most of the story. I don't want to give too much away on here, but there aren't any huge surprises in the movie and we all know how the circle of life works... needless to say, I cried like a baby. I cried from about half way through the movie until the end, then a little more in the car on the way home, and then when we got home and saw the dogs. Andrew might not be thrilled with me sharing this with the world, but he cried too. His quote was "I don't care how big your balls are, that movie will make you cry."


Twenty four hours later, on Friday evening we decided to watch The Dark Knight since Andrew had gotten in on DVD from my parents for Christmas. This is an example of a movie that Andrew really wanted to see when it was playing in the theater, but it never happened. I'm not sure why we never saw it but I'm probably partially to blame. I had taken a nap earlier in the afternoon on Friday so the odds were good I could stay awake for the whole movie. Andrew loved the movie which is good since it was his gift. I liked it but the whole comic book genre isn't really my thing, and this movie is especially dark. About 3/4 of the way through I was kind of ready for it to be over, and as I told Andrew, "ready to be happy again." In terms of action and cinematography it's a great flick, but I prefer something a little lighter for a Friday evening.



To get my mind off the doom and gloom from the previous movie and the reminder of the brevity of life from the evening before, I decided to put in MY Christmas gift DVD, Sleeping Beauty. This was one of my favorite Disney movies as a kid and I was pretty excited to have it on DVD now. I doubted Andrew would watch the whole movie but I needed to watch something happy for my own sake. He surprisingly stuck with it the whole time, and around 2 am Saturday morning, we finally called it a night.

Christmas Day

My AWESOME new red leather Coach bag that Andrew gave me!! I had to pose.


And then my new fluffy bathrobe from my mom and dad. I had to pose again, of course with the bag still.


Macy enjoying one of her Christmas candy canes.


Andrew opening a gift from his parents.... we had no idea what it was going to be!


It's so cute! A Virginia Tech Christmas wreath! That is definitely going on display next year.


Here is Andrew opening Gears of War 2, a video game that he really wanted.


My sweet new Ugg house shoes from Andrew. So warm! I had to model again (with the robe... where is my bag??)



This was a multiple part gift for Andrew... all the necessary ingredients and the bar tool to make Black and Tans. A Black and Tan is a beer drink with a dark beer and a light beer layered in the same glass. The little silver turtle guy sitting on the glass helps you poor them so they stay separated. I think he was more excited about this than the video game.


Beamer happily poses with one of his Christmas/ birthday toys! Happy third birthday Beamer!


And the cooking begins.... Andrew helped peel and chop all the vegetables.


Here I am with our Christmas duck, proudly displaying the neck! Yum!


Gravy is simmering, vegetables are sauteing, potatoes are boiling...



Duck is in the oven!!




Here is our delicious duck!



Our beautiful Christmas dinner: roasted duck, bread stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, crescent rolls and a great bottle of rosè from Marika and Richard, which was really supposed to be a house warming gift, but we wanted to save it for a special occasion! It was a great meal!!



The aftermath.



Macy was worn out from all the cooking so she found a clean laundry basket to take a nap on... thanks Macy.


We were blessed beyond what we could have imagined and had a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve

So far, Christmas in Austin has been great! Yesterday was a fun and beautiful day (sunny 74 degrees) and we enjoyed spending it together. We each had to go into work for a little while in the morning, but that didn't put too much of a damper on things. We met for lunch and drove out to Lockhart with some of my coworkers to eat barbecue at Kreuz Market, one of the top5 named by Texas Monthly. I had been before but Andrew had not and I knew he would love it.











After lunch we went back by my office and then headed over to TDS's exotic game ranch. We recently acquired two camels and I wanted Andrew to see them because they are some of the funniest animals I've ever seen up close. The following video was taken while I was driving the car along side the camel's pen. It's a little rough (hey, it's hard to drive and video at the same time) but you get the idea of how hilarious these creatures are. Please make sure to watch his lips while he runs, especially towards the end of the video where he starts to pick up speed.




Not quite as funny but still peculiar, here are some of our ostriches.





After that we headed home to enjoy the rest of the day work-free. It was so beautiful outside we decided to take the dogs for a walk and have some "family time". There is a large drainage field behind our neighborhood that is dry about 359 days of the year I'm predicting, and we thought it would be fun to let the dogs offleash and get a good run in. They loved it! Beamer ran himself ragged and smelled every square inch of the field. It was great to come home with two tired dogs!




Later in the evening we went to a beautiful candle light Christmas Eve service at University Christian Church. Our church, University Avenue Church of Christ, partners with UCC to do a lot of work in the community, and they have been doing this joint Christmas Eve service for many years now. The inside of the church was beautiful and the organ playing was great! Whenever we are in Austin for Christmas, we will definitely look forward to going to this service. After church we drove around and looked at Christmas lights in some neighborhoods near by. Some of these displays were unreal! I can't imagine how much the electric bill costs after the holiday season!

We finally headed back home since there was a pot roast waiting for us in the crock pot, although neither one of us was starving since we had such a huge lunch. I wanted to eat Christmas Eve dinner on our wedding china, so we got all the pieces out and served up our delicious dinner at 9:30, when we were finally hungry enough to eat again. Notice the candle light.





After dinner we unpacked Andrew's old Super Nintendo and settled in for the night with Super Mario Word! So fun!! The dogs participated in the Christmas fun by sporting their festive bandanas, gifts from "Grandma and Grandpa Keichline." All in all, it was a great Christmas Eve.




Today's activities are about to get underway so it's time to go! Hope everyone has a great Christmas!!

Fed Up with FedEx

I will never ever ever ever ever do business with FedEx ever again. EVER.

They almost created a Christmas nightmare and the sad thing is, no one in the company seemed to really care. I sent a package home to Connecticut with Christmas presents in it for most of my family members. The package arrived in the local facility in Connecticut on Thursday the 18th but never made it to my parents house. These people are the kings of excuses and I spoke to someone on the phone at the facility in Connecticut, a regional center in Atlanta, the corporate office in Memphis and some other facility in Florida. Regardless of my best efforts, my dad still had to drive to the facility to pick up the box this morning after 6 days of non-delivery. I had to wake up at 4:45 am to call the facility and tell them NOT to put the box on a truck again because I had no faith in their ability to deliver it, and that my dad would come pick it up. And after a week and half of tracking the package, 6 days of broken promises, lies, getting the run around, and then ultimately relieving them of the responsibility of actually delivering anything, they won't refund my money. I'm pretty sure I spent more time and effort on the phone to make sure this thing would get delivered than any FedEx employee. It's unbelievable that customer service this terrible can actually exist.




I'm thankful my family was able to get their Christmas presents finally. This isn't going to ruin my Christmas and I'm not going to dwell on it, but FedEx will never see a penny of my money again! Thank goodness for a crisis averted!

Christmas Fun

One of the fun Christmas activities to do in Austin is the Trail of Lights in Zilker Park. The Trail is a walk through display of lights, music, cut outs, etc. that attracts 400,000 people a year. This was our second year to visit the Trail with Lindsey and Jake, so I guess it's becoming an Austin Christmas tradition for the four of us to go together. Of course Sunday night was one of the coldest of the year, with temperatures in the 30s and windchills in the 20s! That didn't stop us from having a great time. Here are some pictures:



This is a cool shot of part of the Trail with the Austin skyline in the background.



Pretty trees


Crazy tunnel made of lights that you walk through.


Some kind of Candy Land like display.


Umm.... Santa on a spaceship?


Trying to stay warm.


The giant tree made of lights.


When you stand inside the tree and look up the lights create a spiral like effect. It's an Austin tradition for little kids (and little kids at heart) to stand inside the tree and spin while looking upwards. I tried to do it on camera to give you the effect but its harder to do while filming than you might think. Here is a piece of Austin Christmas from our city to yours:





Andrew's impression of what you look like after spinning.






Andrew has been working a lot the past few weekends, and this one was no exception. While he was gone Sunday afternoon I spent several hours baking Christmas goodies for us to bring to our offices and some to give to friends. We have enjoyed a few ourselves but are trying not to overload. Some of my creations:







Hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season!

Seriously, Be Jealous

Volume: 13.954 G
Price/ G: $0.499
Total: $6.96

Yes, that's right, gas for 50 cents a gallon. Seven dollars to fill up the car.

For those of you not from around here, Randall's is one of the major grocery store chains in the area. They have a gas rewards program as part of their frequent-customer-type program so that you can earn points towards gas when you purchase groceries. Only some of the locations have gas pumps and the one nearest to our house does not, so we had never redeemed any of our gas points. The other night we were near a Randall's that has gas so we decided to fill up and finally use some of our points. It was a Christmas miracle.

Good Morning (Part 2)

So now for the full story....

A little before 5am we were asleep in bed when the horn on Andrew's car started going off. It sounded like someone hit the panic button on the remote but that explanation didn't make any sense. Since we were woken up out of a deep sleep, neither one of us was thinking too well. Andrew fumbled around to find his keys but had no luck. After maybe 60 or 90 seconds (that felt like an hour while I was sure the whole neighborhood was cursing us) the horn stopped. Andrew said he thought he had left the keys downstairs and maybe the dog had hit them somehow. This was not a good enough explanation for me. After processing the whole thing and waking up a little more, I commented that I thought I heard a car drive by/ away and thought I saw tail lights through the window. Andrew seemed content to go back to bed and fell back asleep pretty quick. I laid there for a few minutes still feeling very unsure of what had just happened. I got out of bed and peaked through the curtains to look down at the car in the driveway. It was pitch black outside so of course I couldn't see a thing. I got back in bed but only got a little doze in because I kept thinking about the car and how I was sure someone had done something to it.

My alarm went off around 6:30 and I got up to shower. The whole time I was getting ready I just kept thinking how sure I was someone was responsible for the horn going off. After I got out of the bathroom I voiced my concerns to Andrew again. Now it was light out, so again I looked out the window down at the car and saw the smashed window. I knew it!! Andrew gave the police a call and they said they'd be out soon. We went outside to check it out but didn't want to touch anything since I guess it was a "crime scene." We saw the hood was popped and wondered if they had taken anything out, but waited till the police came to open it. A neighbor that we are friendly with came over on his way to work and commiserated with us. His family has lived in the neighborhood for 3 years and he said they've never seen anything like that. The police arrived after waiting for about an hour (thanks Austin PD) and fingerprinted everything. I guess its good they did that, but honestly, we have no hope of ever knowing who did it. While they were dusting, another neighbor from a few houses down that we had never met before came by and said her elderly father is in town visiting and thought he saw something over at our house while he was up in the night. She told the police officer that they could come by her house after they were done and talk to her father. We never got the scoop on what her father had to say, but she said she would come over sometime to talk to us and formally introduce herself.

After the police left, we cleaned up the car and the driveway and I headed off to work. Andrew unfortunately had to drive around town with no driver's side window, and of course its the coldest week of the year. During his lunch break he was able to get the window repaired, but since our deductible is higher, this expense was out of pocket. So for Christmas we got a lovely new car window.





When I got home from work I wasted no time in beginning to clean out the garage. If you read a few weeks back, I cleaned out the garage so we could fit one car in. The ironic thing is, since we have been working on the baseboards the past few nights, we had the project table, saw and some other things spread out in the garage, so both cars were parked in the driveway last night. I guess they didn't care about getting my cheap Hyundai. Here's the new and improved parking situation.








I did have some good blogging material from our house adventures last night, but I have blogged enough for today. I guess that will have to wait for another night. I guess tomorrow we can resume our baseboard work, but we're going to have clean up after ourselves every night so that we can park in the garage at night. Hopefully the paranoia won't last too long!!!

Good Morning

This is what we woke up to this morning....








I don't have time to elaborate since I'm already late for work, so you'll get the full story later. They didn't steal anything they just smashed in the window and popped the hood.


Happy Holidays!

It's a Christmas Miracle!!!

WE HAVE BASEBOARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!





We have begun working on the baseboards over the past several days, so here is our progress in pictures:























We've only begun to scratch the surface but at least we're off to a start. We still need to touch up where the nail holes are and caulk along the edges, but so far I think they look great! I really thought we might never have baseboards! I love them!

It's really not that hard to do so now that we got the ball rolling and we know what we're doing, it shouldn't be too hard to continue on. Once the baseboards are done and the transitions between the wood and tile are done, most of our "big" projects will be behind us. It's a good feeling!

Ten days till Christmas!!!!