Merry Christmas!

We had our now-traditional Christmas eve celebration; we went to church with friends and then back to our house for snacks. This year the group consisted of our friends Raeleen and Will. We hit a small speed bumb when we returned from Church and Mojo had broked out of the bedroom and put himself right on the top of the naughty list by opening presents, his and other peoples!

But we quickly got back on track getting food on the table. Raeleen made a Christmas tree shaped brownie and an amazing pizza sandwich! Yumm! We had the traditional bacon wrapped chestnuts plus cucumber sandwiches, Jeff's Buffalo chicken dip, cheese & sausage and crackers plus veggies (more to make us feel good about the table than for eating!) Top that all off with hot spiced cider and call it Christmas Eve! No one saved room for pumpkin pie, so we had to send it out in doggie bags!

After Mojo's adventures which included eating half a box of chocolate covered cherries (he spit the cherries out) he was WIRED and literally RACING around the house on his sugar high. But Will finally got him calmed down and when he crashed, he crashed HARD.

We celebrated Christmas with my family on Saturday with a ham and all the trimmings, and after all the Christmas eve indulgances, we slept in Christmas morning. Surprisingly, the puppies let us! (Mojo was probably still suffering from a sugar hang-over!)

Santa was good to all of us and we enjoyed opening our presents and then watching Christmas movies. I got some new cook-books from Anita, Jeff and Ashley along with a suggestion of Jeff's favorite rib recipe which we tried for Christmas dinner. Ribs in a slow cooker with a spiced peach barbecue sauce all day - It was a great suggestion!

All in all we enjoyed a lovely day relaxing and snuggling on the couch with only a small dread to Pete having to return to work "all the earlier" the next day.

Remembering Nana

We lost Pete's Nana on Dec. 18th, Following is the Tribute Pete gave at her funeral.

Margaret Theresa was my grandmother, but to me she was always Nana. It was hard the last couple of years to see her confined to a wheel chair. My childhood memories were of a woman who loved to sing and who especially loved to dance. She LOVED to dance. Did you know because of her dancing the South Side Journal once did a write-up on her? They called her “The Polka Queen of South St. Louis”? (There was a photo!) She also loved to go to the Cardinal games, and she would always let you know that her favorite player was Ducky Medwick. For many years, when I would see her she would ask “When are we going to a game”. She loved going places, and it didn’t matter if it was a dance or a ball-game, it was impossible to keep her at home. She loved life and being out in the world.

Unfortunately this wasn’t the case later in her life. Sadly, she no longer seemed willing or able to go out into the world and as time passed it was easier to just leave her be. I can only imagine how frustrating this must have been for her.I know everyone here must have a wonderful story of Nana from earlier days, at a church picnic or homecoming, but I would like to share a story with you from later in her life when things maybe weren’t so easy for her.

One holiday I was asked to pick up the Grandmas. I had Nana in the car and was off to pick up Grandma Ruth when Nana started to tell a story. Having no idea what she was talking about the radio probably had much of my attention. From the time I picked her up she had been very scattered, asking the same questions over and over. But once she started telling this story her demeanor changed. She seemed clearer telling her story with great detail. It took a minute but I realized she was telling a story about the time Grandpa Pete was very sick and in the hospital. She would always stay with him until the visiting hours ended but one night as she started to leave, he asked her not to go, he wanted her to stay with him through the night. She agreed and eventually fell asleep holding his hand. Later a nurse woke her saying “Miss Theresa, you need to leave now” My Nana objected saying that her Pete wanted her to stay. The nurse explained that she needed to leave because he was gone. And now she is gone.

But this is not a sad story because it has a happy ending. My Grandpa Pete has got his dance partner back and I’m sure they will be the first couple on Heaven’s dance floor dance floor tonight. (Can you imagine what that orchestra must be like?)

Good luck St. Peter when you try to track her down to give her wings!

We love you Nana and we will miss you.

Still Decorating!

LOVE THIS PICTURE!!
Pete took it while we were decorating the tree and the expression of the bird just seems to sum up a certain stage of Holiday prep. You know the one, there still a little bit of shopping to do, a little bit of food to prepare, a stack of Cards waiting to be addressed and a tub of outdoor decorations waiting for it to warm up just a little!

Nice... and Naughty...










DAaaAd! WHY?!? I love you anyway!!











Here's our lovely tree. It is a perfect shape, which is amazing considering when we brought it into the house it was a frozen solid block of ice!



Decorating is hard work!

It's BEGINNING to look a lot like Christmas!

We have the tree, we have the tubs of decoration unearthed and up from the basement, now we just need to finish the job!!

The weather here is going a long way to making it feel like Christmas! Milwaukee's December snow fall average is 11.5 inches. So far (Dec. 13) we have already gotten 20 inches of snow!!! Luckily we didn't get it all at once and some of it went away before we got hit again. Wednesday we go 7" of wet heavy snow, it was a pain for us, but the dogs LOVED it!

They are wearing their Christmas collars and leashes, they are trying to drink the tree water and when they are not bounding through the snow, I'm sure visions of rawhides are dancing through their heads! I know that Santa has a funny treat in store for them.

Well, this house isn't going to decorate itself, we've got a pot of peppermint coffee (my favorite!) brewing and a stack of Christmas movies and Cds, time to get moving. It's a little financial strain having both of us unemployed at Christmas, but it's GREAT to have the time to spend together. We can decorate without me having to rush off to a show in the middle of it.

Maybe I'll have some 'after' pictures later today!