Merry Christmas!

I hope each of you had a very merry Christmas and are on your way to a fabulous new year!!!

We kicked off the holiday season this year with a visit to ICE! at the Gaylord National Hotel.  We've been in past years, but this year they set it up differently and completely oversold the tickets.  We waited in line for AN HOUR AND A HALF for a 10 minute walk-through exhibit.  None of us were very happy :( Also, it was raining outside and you had to walk through the rain to get to the actual attraction and because it was 9 degrees in there, the rain froze immediately upon entry.  We made the best of it though, and snapped a few shots:

A Love and Ryan, our next Disney Trip Victims (come on, FEB!)

Aren't we cute? (and COLD)

Joey's homemade Ugly Christmas Sweater.

TAXI!!!

 We also got to participate in several events such as work holiday parties (4, so far), Joey's Mom's annual Christmas Shopping Spree for needy families, and my favorite event- my book club meeting for December.  We each brought a book from our shelf or the store and wrapped it up and we did a White Elephant exchange for new books!  IT WAS SO FUN.  I ended up with a Disney World Mystery book.......... so obviously I'm pretty happy :)

Christmas eve we headed down the street to Joey's Parents (I'll be seeing my parents in a week for ALEX AND CORINNE'S WEDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) where we opened gifts and consumed adult beverages.  The "gift of the night" was Joey's gift to Jason- a blow gun.  Basically blow darts, and it came with everything from rubber practice darts to wood skewers to metal pointy blades that would absolutely maim/kill a Min Pin on contact.

Of course, the guys HAD to test it out. In the house.

Nobody got hurt thankfully.

Christmas morning, Joey and I opened gifts under our tree.  I snapped the below shot trying to be artistic but instead I captured a huge orb.  Joey says it's the light coming through the window but I'm not so sure.  I wonder who was sharing Christmas with us?

The Pins really enjoyed their presents- we actually caught Doc under the tree a few days before Christmas playing with his new ball.  Still in the wrapping and everything.  Hilarious how he managed to find the gift with his name on it.  Maybe he can read?? ;)

After opening gifts and watching the Disney Christmas Parade we headed down the street again where there was more blow gun action (and some roof action, when they were told to take it outside and a dart ended up in the gutter) and some delcious feasting!

We had a great Christmas.  Joey got a new watch (if you remember what happened to the last one) and I got a new iPad which I'm pretty excited about playing with!! I got to talk to my family and we will be seeing them VERY SOON at my brother's wedding.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!!!

Feelin' Frosty

Brrrr!!! The winter weather has arrived and I have to say, I was much happier posted up in the bar drinking cocktails under the palm trees Old Key West Resort...

But now that we're back from Disney and Thanksgiving is over and Winter has arrived (and bringing the holidays with it!), the trees are covered in ice, there's snow on the ground too cold for little Min Pin paws, and we even had a rare power outage :(

Today I just wanted to write a quick Ode to Grandmother Willow- you may remember her from other posts like this one.  The old woman has made it through countless storms including hurricanes.  But apparently the ice was a little more than she can handle:

Poor thing.
We'll be working hard to see if we can save her at all.  Either way, I'm looking forward to some great evenings around the fire pit this winter :)

Hope you are all staying warm and cozy.  Bonus points if you live somewhere where it's always warm and cozy.

~SG