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It’s hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone already. This year it was hard for us to get in the Christmas spirit because we have no snow! All of that snow we had completely melted with all of the rain we got last week.

We went to Leah’s parent’s house for the long weekend, had a lot of fun and played a lot of games. Saturday night was Hoopla (we lost), Sunday night was a Texas hold ‘em tournament (Leah’s dad won, Leah got second) and Monday night was Apples to Apples (everyone won but Leah and Leah’s mom). Of course, we watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and A Christmas Story. How can you call it Christmas otherwise? And of course, we ate a lot.

On Christmas Eve, Leah’s aunt and uncle, Lily and our goddaughter, Chloe, came to visit. Chloe sure is getting big!

Some funny Christmas gifts were received. Leah got a singing (well, humming) Gizmo doll and Justin and Russ each got a leg lamp. Gizmo and Casey had a run-in, as you will notice that one of his toes is missing.

See more pictures here.

Well, our weekend was pretty crazy. Friday night was a Christmas dinner party for Greg’s work, which was really good. We both ate way too much, of course. We got up Saturday morning and packed for our trip down for the Packer game. After an unscheduled detour, we stopped at my parents’ house for lunch and to pick up our Santa hats. While we were there, I realized that I’d forgotten my winter boots at home. We stopped for gas and had to take more time because one of the tires on the car was soft. So then we finally got headed to Green Bay when Greg got pulled over for speeding. He didn’t get a ticket, just a warning, but still. We began to think that our trip was cursed, and maybe it’d be better if we just turned around and went home.

But we made it to Appleton without further incident. There we went shopping to get me some new boots. We also had to stop to buy a new bulb for the car because one of the blinkers died.

The traffic getting to the game on Sunday morning was crazy! We were stuck in traffic the last 6 miles or so for more than an hour, but luckily found a parking spot a couple of blocks from the stadium in some guy’s yard. We figured that the guy makes a killing doing this, because he fit about 15 or so cars in his yard at $15 each.

The game itself was a lot of fun. Greg didn’t wear his Santa hat during the game because we were surrounded by Packer fans who were swearing at the only other Lions fan in our area, and he wanted to avoid harassment. The Packers won, which was nice, but it was a pretty horrible game. It was fun, regardless. Now we know that 2 1/2 hours to get from Appleton to the game is not nearly enough. We’ll have to remember that for next time.

Here are more pictures of the weekend.

Greg and I are going to the Packers vs. Lions game this weekend! Should be fun, except I’m having a hard time finding a Lions winter hat for Greg. Apparently, they’re so bad that they’ve stopped making apparel. Kidding! Greg said he wasn’t sure he wanted to wear a Lions hat anyway because of the fear of harassment.

We’ve already decided that when we have kids, they’re going to have be balanced as far as their clothing goes. For example, if they wear a Packers shirt, they’ll have to wear Lions socks, until they’re old enough to choose a team.

Usually when the Packers and Lions play each other, we make a deal that whoever’s team loses has to do the dishes. This is a good deal for me because I hate doing the dishes. Maybe we’ll have to up the ante a bit this time.

Make sure you look for us in the crowd! I’ll be the one wearing a Packer Santa hat sitting next to one of the few Lions fans in the crowd.

Ok, so I decided to snowblow the driveway. We’ve got quite a bit of snow, and we’re supposed to get 6″ tonight. So I figured that I might as well snowblow tonight so that I don’t get stuck in the driveway tomorrow morning. So here’s the story. I get all dressed and go out to the garage, open the door (which is a bitch, let me tell you), and start the machine. It fires up on the first try. So I’m feeling all proud of myself, when suddenly, it shuts off. I try again, but it won’t start. After like the third try, I plug in the electric start, and it still won’t start. I try the electric start again, and it makes a horrible noise. So I unplug it and grab the cord to try to pull-start it again. Only now the cord won’t pull at all. So I swore a bit and gave up.

Once I got back inside, I looked it up online, and it turns out you have to remove belts and stuff to fix it. Great. I know I said I didn’t want to snowblow, but I didn’t think I’d actually break the snowblower. Maybe I really will get stuck in the driveway in the morning and then I can have a snow day. That’s not a bad idea.

Well, it appears as though winter has finally arrived. We got some snow this past weekend, and Greg had to show me how to work the snowblower so that I can get my car out if it snows more this week while he’s gone. I also have to figure out how to give Gilbert his ear drops by myself. He’s not liking them so much.

We also put up our tiny Christmas tree, as you can see from the picture on our home page. We try to buy a couple of new ornaments each year, and that tree is packed with them. Plus, I bought two more today, so we’ll have to try to fit them in somehow. Hopefully next year we’ll have a bigger house so we can get a real tree. Maybe that house will have outside outlets so that we can put up lights, too. Our house is the least Christmasy-looking one in the area, because you can’t see the tree from the windows, and we can’t put up any lights. I did put up some “pine-like” garland with red bows on the front porch, but you can’t see that at night.

I just checked the weather and our forecast for the next four days is a variation of “snow likely” and “snow possible.” So I might be figuring out how to run that snowblower after all.