Happy New Year!

We four wish you a healthy, prosperous and fun New Year!

GIMLI: I have to stay up til midnight? But, I'm sleepy now.

MERIDA: You go to bed, I'll keep the bottle company.

Gimli waves goodbye to 2014, Merida has already moved on.

Merry Christmas!

And I watched him exclaim as he frapped out of sight,

Merry Christmas to all!

And to all a good night!

We hope you had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Festivus or a good holiday with your family and friends!

Days of Christmas - 12

As one ages, Christmases tend to blend into one another so that you remember them in flashes here and there.

One of these flashes takes me back to Christmas Eve as a child in Trinidad. There was ham in the oven, filling the room with the lovely smells. Carols on the radio and fresh bread anxiously waiting for the ham.

This is one tradition I've brought forward to our lives. Every Christmas Eve, I make a ham and we have ham sandwiches for dinner. The corgis are always close by and they are rewarded with a small piece. I am rewarded with gobs of drool on the floor. :)

Then, we horse around on the floor with the dogs, race up and down the hallway, and have plenty of cuddles. Right now, it's a waiting game for Gimli to go to bed. Then, I can fill the stockings without him obsessing over his and the cookies inside.

Days of Christmas - 11

What started out as a place to put our Christmas cards has now become overrun with other, non Christmas items so we have to put some of the cards on the half wall.

I think next year I will come up with a better method to store the Christmas cards. To Pinterest I will go!

This is a nice idea: Paperclip ribbon card display as is this one: Kitchen cupboard ribbon.

Time will tell on if I actually get it done next year!

Days of Christmas - 10

This year, I strung the lights a little differently. I found this method: Stringing lights and figured I'd give it a try.

The first thing: you use a bit more lights than usual. In this picture there are 6 or 7 strings.
Secondly, it's probably best to stick with one color or a multi-colored string of lights, else you may run out and have to locate an extra string that may or may not go with your color scheme. We ran into this scenario - usually, I put up red and purple lights, but I didn't have enough, so I switched to the red and white. It makes it look like a candy cane, so it's not too bad.

Our tree now has a wide assortment of Disney ornaments, and fewer regular ornaments. I keep joking to Mike that we need a second tree to handle Disney!

Days of Christmas - 9

Stuffed animal friends.

These little guys only come out for about a month each year and I position them around the house. Gimli doesn't pay them any attention, but Merida thinks they are hers to poke and investigate.

I wouldn't put it past her to steal one and de-stuff it!

Days of Christmas - 8

Ugh, I've been horribly late with the majority of these posts, but this one at least is ok.

One of the things I enjoy about the Christmas season is getting together with friends. Friday night, we went out for schnitzel. It was to die for!

This is the Husar Schnizel, which is pork with potatoes, bacon, and hot peppers. I ended up taking home a doggie bag and ate it for lunch the following day. Still good!

After dinner, we went back to our friends' house to hang out.

On Saturday night, we visited our neighbor's and extended the holiday merriment. On the drink menu were Hazelnut martinis and Blue Glowtinis, in a word - YUM!

At times, we become caught up in the hustle and bustle of the season and we forget that the simple things like good food and drinks with great people are what really matter.

Days of Christmas - 7

Our Throwback Thursday for this month:

Puppy Merida on her stocking.

Six years ago, this was us with squirmy little fluffy Gimli.

I miss having a fluffy puppy swishing around the house. Fluffs are so incredibly soft and Gimli was such a cutie at that age.

Days of Christmas - 4, 5, 6

So, dear friends, I'm sorry for missing those 2 days. Life, and work, gets in the way sometimes, but here I am now.

Monday and Tuesday were crazy busy days and I felt a little down,

However, there's nothing like receiving mail that makes things a little better.

I had ordered a corgi t-shirt from GiveAFluff and it arrived on Monday. We also ordered next year's calendar, some magnets and some mugs from Vistaprint and the shipment arrived on Tuesday. This, coupled with some snuggle time with Merida, made me feel a little better.

This is part of the Christmas spirit, having family to prop you up when you're feeling down. Of course, this face doesn't hurt either.

Our drink for today is tea in some fetching cups. Some days, only a cup of tea will do!

Days of Christmas - 3

The corgis have created their Christmas lists:

Gimli:

cookies
food
cheese
toys
a new wubba
apples
more cookies
tons of Marrowbones
more cheese
peanut butter
bacon
toys
an egg

Merida:

snow!
cookies
apples
some Marrowbones
toys
whatever Candy's eating
a toy with lots of stuffing that I can destroy
a new shirt to wear
peanut butter
my own big blanket to cuddle on the couch, in Mike and Candy's bed, on the floor, and other such places.
more toys

My dogs have a one track mind, as you can see.

I find, when making up Christmas lists, it's nice to have some hot chocolate with Baileys in it. Today's mix contained store bought hot chocolate mix, Bailey's Hazelnut, and whipped cream.

Yum!

Days of Christmas - 2

We received a rather large Christmas stocking and it seems both corgis have claimed it.

Gimli hasn't figured out that it's a stocking, he thinks it's a big piece of fabric. He is well aware of stockings and what can be found in them, though! It's at the point now where I cannot put out the stockings until Christmas Eve, after the dogs have gone to bed.  If not, Gimli will find it and he'll figure out a way to steal it or he'll sit in front of it all day.

I thought I had corgis, not children!

With the dogs hanging out with this large stocking, it's time for a nice glass of cider. I'm a big fan of Strongbow cider, and I'm a big fan of the Bacardi Breezers drinks, so when I saw this mash-up, I was intrigued.

Alas, it did not live up to my expectations. It contains cider and rum, and I didn't like it. It wasn't "cidery" and it wasn't "rummy", just something in the middle - as if you'd mixed apple juice and one of the Bacardi Breezers together in your kitchen.

I won't buy this one again, back to Strongbow it is!

Days of Christmas - 1

Here's another go round of our Days of Christmas themed pictures. I know I said I'd include drinks in these, but alas, no drink picture for today.

I will make it up in later posts.

Edit: There's a 6 pack in the picture, does that count? :)

For today's post, we have a sneaky creature by the Christmas tree. I wonder if she's scouting for the Grinch?

Wordless Wednesday - Waiting

5 things - December edition

1. I'm fighting a cold/flu/plague/disease of some kind. I have a scratchy throat and I feel ill, but not ill enough to take a sick day. It's quite frustrating, in that I cannot exert myself because then I become tired quite quickly. I didn't put in a run today, unfortunately, but I did some time on the TreadClimber.

I'm counting that as a win!

2. Merida has turned the corner on her UTI. The last dose of medicine is tomorrow morning. She's feeling better almost back to normal. She's still upset though, all her snow has melted away.

Maybe she'll get a white Christmas.

Gimli continues to look for his ducks when we go for walks, even though the ducks have been brought inside. If I even ask him about the duckies, he remembers and we have to go see them.

He's a silly bear, this one.

3. My birthday was last week and I felt quite special this time around. It's the first birthday I get to spend with Merida - last year, we were away. I took the day off and wandered around a local candy shop, had a large breakfast, and spent time with Mike and the corgis.

4. I'm planning to do the 12 days of Christmas again this year, but I'll be adding drinks to it as well. We'll see how that goes :)

5. I haven't yet seen the Muppet Family Christmas special on tv. This is one of the programs that gets me into that Christmas mood, plus it has the Muppets from Sesame Street, The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock, and Muppet Babies.

Mike and I are quite different when it comes to Christmas specials - he likes the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Coming to Town, while I don't care for those.

I prefer the Muppets, the Blackadder Christmas Carol, and Mickey's Christmas Carol.

Flat Corgi Friday - A girl and her corgis

the Disney Fantasy - May 2014

I had a lovely day with the doggies today - early morning snuggles in bed, a crazy play session, and a nice walkies.

On today of all days, that makes an excellent present.

Wordless Wednesday - Christmas fuzzies

Sorry for the blurries :(

Take 2 of these and call me in the morning

We're back from the vet's office and Ms. Merida does have a UTI. They found a small amount of blood and crystals in her urine, the poor dear.

She's on antibiotics for the next week, and with luck, this will be the last of it. She's no worse for wear though, she's running around with Gimli and continues to jump on him to wrestle.

A funny tidbit from today:

There's a vet student who works at the office and she was in with the Dr. to shadow. The student and the Dr. had a bet going to see who could guess where Merida's name came from.

The student won.

To the vet

We're off to the vet either tomorrow or Wednesday.

I suspect Merida has a UTI - she's been "dribbling" every time she's been out today and she had an accident inside. We were gone this evening for about an hour and half - usually that's no trouble for her, but not today.

I think it's in the early stages - ie no blood yet, so we're going to call the vet in the morning and see if they can squeeze her in.

This is the first I've dealt with a UTI, so I'm being overly cautious and watching her like a hawk. From what I've seen, they are going to need a urine sample, (Good luck :( ), and then she'll need a course of antibiotics. We'll know more once we're able to see the vet.

In the meantime, she's sleeping in our room in the event she needs to go during the night.