Christmas, Birthday and BBQ Ribs

Merry Christmas!

We stayed in Kansas City this week and have enjoyed a quiet birthday/holiday celebration with the 5 of us.  We do miss seeing family, but we will see all of them in a little over a week when we take Charlie back to Cascade for his baptism.  Yesterday was BJ's birthday, so we celebrated by going out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse last night.  I'm not the best online shopper, so BJ's gifts this year consisted of the Wii Tiger Woods golf game from me and a book entitled "Why Every Son Needs a Dad" from Charlie.  Given all of Tiger's alleged misgivings, I was a little upset that I was contributing to his fortune; however,  BJ pointed out that Elin will probably split any profit that Tiger would have made off of my purchase.  Whew...I can sleep better tonight.

 I made peanut butter cup cookies for BJ's birthday and despite our best efforts to leave the cookies out of Ginger Girl's reach, she helped herself to a few while we were out to dinner.  Lucky for her, Santa already picked up gifts for she and Copper so it was too late to move her to the "naughty" list.  Thankfully neither BJ nor I have much willpower when it comes to cookies or chocolate so we ate 95% of the cookies before Ginger got her little paws on them.

Below are some pictures from our birthday dinner.  Charlie slept through the entire thing, so I am pointing to him to prove that he was actually in attendance.  I can't figure out how to get rid of our red eyes right now, so please know that it is user error and we have not been possessed by any demonic spirits.  BJ's assured me that his birthday was very nice.  Let's face it, nothing says "happy birthday" like some cinnamon butter rolls from Texas Roadhouse and a holiday-themed ram overlooking you as you eat dinner.








 





 





 







After opening BJ's birthday gifts we helped Charlie get his "Santa" plate ready.  We sampled one of the sugar cookies that I made for Santa and realized why Ginger chose the peanut butter cup cookies while we were out.  Santa managed to eat a few cookies, but probably took the rest with him for the remainder of his journey to use as weapons in case he encountered any criminals along his way.  Charlie's list to Santa was pretty minimal this year since he really isn't into toys yet.  When we woke up this morning his stocking was full some wrist rattles, toys to attach to his car seat and a few "soft" books for him to chew on.  Copper and Ginger scored some milkbone biscuits and rawhide chewies.








One of my co-workers gave Charlie this cute "Santa" plate, which will be used for many years.












Yes, I am wearing flannel penguin jammies.  We were invited to an "ugly pajama" Christmas party last December and I picked up this little number for the event.  Turns out, they are really comfy and given my knack for keeping clothes for waaaaaaaaaay too long in my wardrobe, they will probably make an appearance for the next 15 winters.










We're just hanging out today feasting on random food and enjoying "Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life".  If we had attended church this morning the whole day would have seemed very Norman Rockwell-like.

Finally, a picture of Charlie Boy in his Christmas outfit.  He just finished eating in this picture so he's in his "food coma" pose.  We hope that you all had a great Christmas!