Holiday craziness

Well, Christmas ended up being good but very hectic. Wednesday was a very crazy stressful day. It seemed like all we did was rush around and to top things all off, Big Country and I were at each others throats. I think the Holiday stress got to both of us and we both acted crazy. Anyway, once we got on the road to my Aunt & Uncles house- things calmed down.

Christmas at my Aunt & Uncle's house was very nice. We got a lot of neat stuff and Mason got the rainforest Jumperoo from his Great Grandma. I made broccoli salad and deviled eggs to take. I was a lil disappointed in how the eggs turned out. They were good, but the shells wanted to stick to the egg whites and I hate it when that happens.

We stayed the night at my parent's house on Christmas Eve night. I was up until 1:15am making a breakfast casserole that turned out fabulous!!!! It's called breakfast in a crockpot.

1 lb bacon or sausage
2 lb pkg of frozen southern style hashbrowns
1 10.5oz can cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese
1 cup milk
12 eggs
1 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 1/2 to 2 cups of shredded cheese (I used sharp cheddar)

Brown, drain, and crumble sausage or bacon. Combine and blend together soup, milk, sour cream, and cream cheese in a large bown. Then add milk, shreadded cheese, garlic and onion and mix well.
Whisk eggs in a separate bowl then combine with cheese mixture, adding hash browns until thoroughly coated. I reserved some of the shredded cheese and sprinkled on top of the mixture.
Coat large crockpot with an oil spray, add mixture and cook on low for 8-10 hrs.

Omg, it was wonderful. I found the recipe in a cookbook that my Grandma got me a few years ago.

Christmas morning at my Mom & Dad's house was really nice. Christmas Day was a lot less stressful than Christmas Eve was! We opened presents and ate a glorious breakfast. Then we went home, unloaded our loot, and headed to the in-laws house. There were a lot of people there in a very small cramped house but we survived. Then around 8 o'clock last night we headed over to Big Country's sisters house for another wonderful meal.

Big Country got me the perfume I really wanted and a ring. I haven't got my ring yet. Apparently he went to go pick it up before Christmas and it hadn't been sized yet. So I haven't got to see it yet. By the end of the day yesterday I was so exhausted! Mason had a good Christmas! He got tons of toys. I will have to take a pic of him in his jumperoo. He is so cute in it. Mason had two big melt downs yesterday and I think it was b/cuz he was out of his routine, exhausted, and had been passed around quite a bit. He didn't want to sleep in his crib last night. I finally gave up b/cuz I had absolutely no energy and Big Country stayed up trying to get him to sleep. We would get him to sleep and as soon as you'd lay him down in his crib he'd wake up and get pissed. So, it was a battle.

We will be spending the rest of our weekend moving. Lovely. I can't wait until it's over with. I really and truely dislike moving and I'll be glad when it's over.

Have a great weekend and a safe and happy New Year!

Bah Humbug!!!!!!!

Well, I wish I could tell you that my Christmas Eve was off to a great start, but that would be a total lie. I'm realizing that I missed something in my marriage vows. Apparently somewhere in there it said "thou shalt not enjoy Christmas from this point forward" and I missed that part. I give. This Christmas is already hard enough and Big Country aka Ebenezer Scrooge insists on busting my balls every chance he gets. At this point, I don't even care about Christmas. My heart has a huge empty spot in it and yet I'm so filled with anger that I can't see straight. Merry F'in Christmas. I can't wait for it to be over and trust me when I say that things will be different next year!

working on Christmas Eve sucks butt

I am totally psyched about the fact that I get to work tomorrow. I'm layin' the sarcasm on pretty thick- in case you didn't pick up on it. I am only going in for a half day, which will entail our annual Christmas Eve party at work and probably no actual work. The people in the office that participated in the secret santa excuse will reveal their identity and exchange gifts. Those of us who opted to sit out of the fabulous gift exchange this year will do....? I am really not looking forward to tomorrow. Who wants to work on Christmas Eve?

Off to bed so I can get up and start a hectic day tomorrow.

Merry Christmas and God bless.

Tis the season

Well, just like clockwork, today kicked off our annual holiday blow out. Every year, a couple days before Christmas, Big Country and I have a good blow out and today was that fabulous day. It's always about the same thing too: money. It's like this- I am married to a big scrooge. He doesn't like Christmas for the following reason: It's stressful worrying about getting presents and what to buy etc., shopping for this person and that. That is a valid argument. The holiday season can be very stressful.

However.

I do ALL the shopping, decorating, cooking, planning, wrapping etc. All he has to do is show up, eat, open presents and be frickin merry. I think the only reason we have a Christmas tree this year is because of Mason. Last year I couldn't even get him to get up in the attic to get the shit down. Our attic is weird. It's a huge opening in the ceiling of the garage and there is no ladder. So Big Country stands on something kinda tall and can reach up there. I just try to avoid that situation altogether because with my luck I'd fall.

Big Country hates Walmart and he hates crowds and shopping. So, he waits until Dec. 23rd or 24th to go to Walmart to get something and then bitches and turns into a grump b/cuz there are tons of people and lines. I made the mistake one year of waiting on him to decide what he wanted to get his Mom and Step-Dad for Christmas. He kept putting it off and we ended up at the store on Dec. 23rd waiting in line for what seemed like hours. Now I just buy for everyone and don't ask for his input. So now he doesn't understand why we have to "buy for this one and that one". I stay within a very reasonable price range for each person, but we have a lot of people to buy for. What am I supposed to do tell people they didn't make our Christmas list this year? Uggggh- he irritates me.

I'm changing his name to Ebenezer. Bah Humbug.

I, on the other hand, have always loved Christmas and I am trying to keep my spirits up despite Big Country's "scrooge-like" attitude.

air drying is probably a better alternative????

on our girls shopping trip a couple weekends ago, a very funny story about big country came to mind. the girls and i stopped in at a big and tall store so i could shop for big country. let me tell you how hard it is to find jeans for big country. he wears a 40X34 which is always the biggest and hardest to find in a regular store. in a big and tall store- he wears the smallest size. so in the midst of my frustration of trying to find him jeans, i remembered this one pair of jeans i bought him when we were in Kansas City MO a few years ago. omg, they were hot and he looked so good on him. we bought them in Nov (the only reason i remember that is b/cuz we were in MO for thanksgiving) and in Feb the hot sexy jeans met their final resting place. i am still pissed that i only got to enjoy looking at his sexy ass in those jeans for two short months. the jeans were just a pair of levi's and i think it was the coloring/worn look that made the jeans look extra hot on him.

anyway, the story....

big country and i went to gatlinburg with a couple friends- who happened to be gay. that in itself was odd to me that big country wanted to go- seeing how homophobic he is. we rented a chalet in the mountains for a couple days. each bedroom had a heart shaped jacuzzi in it with a shower curtain that pulled around it so you could take a shower. big country gets in the shower and forgets to take his jeans off the platform around the jacuzzi. he realizes his jeans are wet and leaves the bedroom. i finish getting ready and walk out of the bedroom to smell smoke. wtf? there stands big country in his underwear- next to the OVEN. i soon figure out he put his jeans in the oven to dry them! it wasn't long after i asked him what the hell he was doing- that the sexy jeans caught on fire. he grabbed them out of the oven with some tongs and threw them in the fire that was going in the fireplace.

why would you put something flammable in the oven just to dry it? i'll never understand it. that's a man for ya. big country is such a damn hilljack sometimes (ok, maybe 99% of the time). nonetheless, i love the hilljack. i'll keep him around at least for the comedy value ;-)

Christmas traditions

Every Christmas Eve of my entire life has entailed a trip to Grandma and Grandpas for Christmas Eve dinner (the best meal of the year). Grandma would always make a huge spread. She made tons of food so we'd all have left overs to eat on Christmas Day and wouldn't have to cook. Oh my, she made the best party potatoes (mashed potatoes with sour cream and cream cheese) and mayonnaise cake ever. I don't really know what all is in the mayo cake but I know she puts miracle whip and cocoa and... she just "puts in a lil of this n a lil of that." It is the most moist chocolate cake ever. Isn't it funny how Grandmas bake and know all the tricks? I wonder if we will be the same way when we're grandparents- since now you can buy rolls of cookie dough to easily bake and I think most of us now-a-days don't 1. have the time in our busy lives to bake or 2. we don't know how. So it's easy to grab premade cookie dough.

Anyway, back to holiday traditions.... Christmas Eve at Grandma and Grandpas house always went the same. My Dad's side of the family is very small. So it's just my parents, uncle and wife, and gma and gpa. We would eat, eat some more, talk about how stuffed we are, and someone gets nominated to be Santa and pass out presents. Then after all the presents were open, we'd visit, and start packing up the car for our hour + drive home. I always enjoyed falling asleep in the car on the way home... from the time I was a kid til even know. I just always feel comfy, full, happy, and warm and snuggled in the car.

We are trying to start a new tradition this year. They say you should do that when you have lost a loved one. So, since this is our first Christmas without Grandpa, we are having Christmas Eve dinner at Uncle Ron and Aunt Deb's house. It will be better this way b/cuz Grandma just turned 83 and although she is in excellent shape, it's a lot of work for her to cook for all of us. So, we're all bringing a dish (like we have in the past) and Grandma is bringing party potatoes to my Uncle's! We've instructed her to only bring 3 things.

... but what's it going to be like when we all sit down around the tree to open presents and Grandpa (who was the rock of our family) isn't there? I can just hear my Grandma saying "this doesn't feel like Christmas" and it breaks my heart. Her first Christmas alone in 63 yrs. God love her.

Anyway, let's toast to the fond memories of old Christmas traditions and welcome the birth of new family traditions. Have a warm and safe weekend and goodluck with any last minute Christmas shopping. I know I will be out at some point tieing up loose ends.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goonight.

Thursday blahs and no sunshine.

It's been a few days since my last blog. I've been busy with getting ready for Christmas. I still have a few more things to get and I feel like I am running out of time. Tomorrow Big Country and I are leaving to go to Cleveland for his work Christmas party. We are staying the night in a hotel and might get up and hang around for a little while before we head back. We plan to spend Sunday packing and maybe start moving to the new house. That pretty much leaves Monday and Tuesday for me to finish up last minute ends with my Christmas shopping. I am getting scared, lol, AND I haven't even started wrapping anything. I think I will resort to a lot of gift bags this year. I know it's lazy compared to actually wrapping a gift, but with the little one and getting other things done- that's just how it has to be. I am hoping to get to the store tonight to get a few odds and ends needed to make a gift basket.
I'm feeling rather blah today. I don't have much else exciting to talk about. Of course, there is always drama with the in laws, but if I told you half the shit that goes on- you'd get tired of hearing it very quickly- trust me.
I am planning to make a candy cane cheesecake and buffalo chicken dip for Christmas Eve dinner, and a breakfast casserole for Christmas morning. I will post those recipes at a later date. I actually don't feel like doing it now and I would rather be lazy. I think my body is seriuosly lacking vitamin D from the sun.
Anyway, that's all for now. Sorry so boring- just in a blah mood.