~Christmas at Home~

We had a whirlwind trip home this week and crammed lots and lots of good stuff into it! It was much too short although very dearly cherished time home with family. We had an uneventful flight into Edmonton, very nice, comfortable plane though! We arrived in Edmonton around 8:30pm and called my brother, Richard, to find out where he was. So we loaded up a cart with all our stuff and headed out to the van, tired and starving. Who is sitting there smiling at me? Mom!!!! She wasn't supposed to be coming with him, he told her she was to stay home! So that was a nice suprise.

We were starving but alas the airport is near exactly nothing for food and we weren't driving back into the city to eat so we headed to Camrose. I thought I was going to die from hunger! I hadn't ate since around 2pm that afternoon, other than a couple of snacks! So we discussed all the different places we could eat in Camrose and ended up at.... McDonalds....of all places!!! Then we grabbed a oh-so-yummy-and-delectable- cup of Tim Hortons coffee and hit the road home to Moms'. Mmmmmm I love Timmys! It was like gold nectar on my lips!!!

I don't know how I did it but I managed to stay up every night I was at Mom's till at least midnight in order to visit lots. I didn't even have time for naps!!! Melissa came for a nice long visit on Saturday and somehow we spent hours together and got exactly ZERO pictures of each other!! Duh! I got pics of the kids though, look how big they are getting!!!

Here is Tanner, check out his big blue eyes!!! He's going to be a heartbreaker!

Caleb, the little one! He's so big now!!! He is also going to be a heartbreaker! Melissa and Mike will have their hands full with these two little studs!!!

This is Melissa' little sister Stephanie's daughter Kylie... did you follow that one? She looks so much like her Mom did when she was little!!! I can see Steph in her so much!

So much fun seeing them all again and makes me so sad to know that we are so far away and that the kids just keep getting bigger and bigger...

On Sunday we hijacked Moms' car and went to Vegreville to visit with Randys' Mom. She has 16...yes...16 puppies in the house right now!!! Holey Moley!!! There were cages of dogs everywhere in her house! They were all really little too, here's a pic of me holding one of them, they were soooo cute!!

For those that don't know, Maxine breeds Shitzu dogs and sells them. She typically doesn't have this many at a time but she had a 'bumper' of a crop this time around, LOL!

We had a good visit with her and Cliff and exchanged our Christmas gifts that day too. She also has a gift bag at her house, the size of me, that she has started to fill with presents for the baby. Oh my goodness, she's going crazy!!! It's already about a 1/4 of the way full and so far it has 3 stuffed bears, a set of bibs, a 2 piece outfit, a Vtech book, some really cute socks... I think that's it but it was very touching to see! She probably thinks I'm crazy because I wasn't overly excited about it but I was feeling so crappy I was having a hard time not throwing up! So I AM EXCITED MAX, THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Apparently, as Cliff tells it, she comes home from work, sits on the couch and then says "Well I'm going to town to shop for the baby" and out the door she goes! She's getting really excited about being a grandma and it's such a weird/nice thing to watch happen. I've never seen something transform her to such a degree before. Her sister, Sharen, warned me it would happen and she was right! LOL!

On Monday Randy, Mom and I went to Wainwright to do a little last minute shopping at Walmart. We of course went to the new Tim Hortons in Wainwright and had breakfast. Have I mentioned how much I LLLOOOOVVVEEEE Tim Hortons! Oh so good! We did our shopping quickly and went back home and while Mom and I started baking, Randy and Dahlea (my brothers' daughter) started making a gingerbread house. Long story short: Every year Randy attempts (cough, *Snort, laugh) to make a gingerbread house, every year it, for the most part, sucks. So this year my sister Mary bought him a kit. A Wilton kit. Okay, got that.... Here is the result:

The preparation, make the icing, check all the pieces out, break out the candies...

Attempt to squeeze out the icing in a nice, concise line to glue parts together...

Laugh when the icing bag bursts because the icing is too thick...

Try to outsmart the icing bag by rolling little lines of icing...

Screw that, that doesn't work, lets' thin out the icing a bit with more water....

Taste test the icing, just in case...

Maybe it's a little tooo thin now... oh well, screw it... let's just go ahead and slap it on anyhow...

Yet another taste test...

The finished result... and the happy bakers!

The final result, close-up, showing the feat of engineering that it is, toothpicks and all!

So while they puttered away at that, Mom and I made three pies, a coconut cream, and two lemon meringue, plus about 4 dozen buns and 12 coconut cream tarts. Whew, we worked our buns off!

Christmas Eve was the quietest one I've ever had at home. It was kind of sad really. There was only Randy, Mom and I and then Breanne came to visit for a half and hour. Not at all the huge family gathering it usually is. Everyone was either working, far away, or at their in-laws house.

Christmas Day was a bit busier but still less crowded then usual. My sister Thelma, Shirley and my brother Richard all came and misc nieces and nephews. About 17 of us in total this year. Here are pics of Randy vying for the GOOD piece of the turkey, the leg...

Hovering over Mom and Thelma as they attempt to take the turkey out of the roaster... warning... DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES make mention of the fact that there is no rack in the bottom of the roaster or the fact that the roaster looks like it boiled over to my Mother... she ranted about it all day long and if I have to hear about it again...

So after all that hovering and carefully overseeing the removal of the turkey, THIS is what Mom gives Randy for all his hard work... the bone! Doesn't he look so sad and dejected... Nah, don't feel sorry for him! After all a turkey that big had to have TWO legs to walk around on!

Here is a shot of the grandkids (My nieces and nephews and their assorted boyfriends/girlfriends) hanging out waiting for dinner.

So that was Christmas for us this year. We went to Edmonton on Boxing Day to do some shopping. We braved I think 4 stores and then said screw it and went for dinner to The Keg. Mmmmm The Keg, have I mentioned before how much I love The Keg??? My Prime Rib was perfect, and I managed to not contract an everlasting hatred for Randy as he drank a glass of red wine while he ate his...

Mom dropped us off at the hotel and a few soggy kleenexes later I sat and watched TV for like 6 hours with Randy. It's a novelty for us since we still don't have our dish set up. We got up REALLY early this morning (4:30am BC time) to catch our shuttle to the airport. Once we got there we found out that the ticket booth for Central Mountain Air doesn't open until 6:45am...arggghh, an hour to kill with a lot of luggage and the airport is PACKED!!! So I sent Randy on our last Tim Hortons run for coffee and bagels and 45 min later he returned...ONE girl working by HERSELF at the Timmies at the Airport this morning!!! That girl deserves a freaking AWARD!!!! Nevertheless I devoured the bagel like it was my first food in weeks and happily slurped up my coffee.

We had dreaded going through security because it was so freaking busy there but lo-and-behold our flight is executive class and we got to use the fly through gates!!! Woo-hee, 2.2 seconds to do security. Well that it until Wanda gets flagged to do a random body search. Yup, arms and legs splayed full body pat down in the middle of the freaking airport!!! She was good about it though, asked me if I wanted her to pat a little extra harder on my back while she was at it, LOL! I'm always getting flagged, either they think I'm a nice person and won't yell at them in order to meet their quota or I look suspicious, either way I get it! On the way down all my carry-on was swabbed for bombs in Ft St John. Yup, thats me, trusty little ticker in my camera bag, LOL! Thankfully we had time and didn't care either way but Randy loves to tease me about it all the time!

So we're home now, and tired out from our travels. I worked today but only lasted for a few hours before I burned out. I work tomorrow then I have the weekend off, thank goodness!!! There is a new, really good scrapbooking store opened in Hardisty (my hometown) that I managed to score some goodies from while I was home so I want to play this weekend. I also want to post some pics of some of our favorite gifts we received this Christmas. So this weekend keep your eyes peeled for that!