Christmas!!

I just got back from California yesterday, and I had an AMAZING time there.  The weather was lovely during my whole trip (highs in the low 60s... Pretty perfect, if you ask me!), and it was really nice to thaw out for awhile.  As always, it was amazing to see my friends and family, and I had SO much fun.  Those 9 days at home flew by!!  I can't believe Christmas is already over...

I did everything from my Christmas Bucket List!!  Here it is if you want to see it again:

I think you all saw in my previous post that McGee and I got a Christmas tree and decorated our crappy apartment.  I saw ALL of my favorite Christmas movies this year, and I also saw Polar Express for the first time and we made the Polar Express Cocoa to drink while watching it!!  I don't know how many of you have seen Polar Express, but I didn't love it... I thought it was weird, and it just wasn't my thing.  I don't think it'll be in my Christmas must-see list... But I did LOVE the hot cocoa!!  If any of you need a really rich and delicious (and high-calorie) hot cocoa recipe, just let me know!!  It was amazing, though I think it was a bit too much chocolate for McGee to handle (What a rookie.... Just kidding, my love!!).  I finished making gifts for 2 out of the 3 people I wanted to make gifts for, so I'll make that third one next year.  I also sent out Christmas Cards, and I helped my mom with holiday baking!  She did 95% of it, but I helped a tiny bit... Mainly with decorating the butter cookies.  Here's my favorite one I did:

The cookie cutter is supposed to be a Santa hat, but if you turn it to the side I thought it looked like an elephant, so that's how I decorated it!  If you tilt your head to the left, I think you might be able to see the elephant... Maybe... Hopefully... 

Our Christmas Eve family party was an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party this year, and we had some good ones!  

My mom working hard in the kitchen.  It's hard to see her sweater, but it was great!

Here's my dad's awesome outfit!  

Brad and Amanda!!

The girls looking adorable, as always.  And that's Dad and Jim in the background, looking at Dancing Snoopy.

Here's my socks!  I didn't get any pictures of my sweater... 

Jim and Rhoda!!  Rhoda did a great job making her sweater.  

Kim and Nick!!  They made their sweaters, and Nick was the clear winner of our sweater contest!!  He had a pocket for his phone, and he had the fireplace app on his phone.  It was amazing.  

Traci and Kevin!  Yes, those are humping reindeer on his sweater!

On Christmas Day we just did a lot of relaxing, and Brad, Amanda, Cassidy and Addison came over later in the day.  We had a delicious dinner (prepared by Mom... she did a LOT of cooking over the holidays, if you can't tell!), and opened presents!  

I had to add this picture, because Addison's pouty face cracks me up!!  She's looking so serious.  

Here's the minion toys that McGee got for the girls!!  

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!!  

SNOW!!!!

So, I think you all know that I'm not the biggest fan of winters here... BUT, I was really looking forward to the first big snowstorm this year because I was excited to see what Guinness thought of snow!

On Sunday, we definitely got a big snowstorm.  I'm not sure how many of you saw the Eagles game on TV... which was played IN Philadelphia.. .but it was pretty much a whiteout at times.  Once the snow had slowed down a little bit, we headed outside with Guinness.  He was a little timid at first, and was really confused by it... and he was getting really confused by his footprints in the snow.

He's studying some of his footprints:

He started to really get into it though, and he loved burying his nose and face in the snow.  

Here he is watching McGee make a snowball... He was fascinated.

After playing in the snow by our apartment building for a bit, we decided to head over to the dog park, because maybe FOR ONCE it wasn't a muddy gross mess, so we wouldn't have to worry about Guinness eating mud and getting sick!  We were happy to see that nobody else had our brilliant idea, and Guinness had the whole dog park to himself.  He had SUCH a blast running around and playing in the snow, and so did McGee :)

I think this was the best day we've ever had with Guinness!  We all had SO much fun, and wow was Guinness exhausted when we got back to the apartment!!  It was an awesome day.  

On Tuesday it snowed again, and it was not as much fun... Probably because McGee and I both had to work.  I tried taking Guinness over to the dog park in hopes of it being awesome like it was over the weekend, but alas, it was a muddy gross mess again (I think many other dogs had made a mess of it with the previous snow). 

It's definitely Winter...

Today we're supposed to get some decent amounts of ice and snow later.  Booooooo.  Kevin and I have big plans to stay home and hibernate.  We're going to watch some football, and I'm going to work more on my Christmas cards to send to people, as well as the few homemade gifts that I'm trying/hoping to make.  I'm hoping I finish some stuff today!  Fingers crossed!

Yesterday we drove down to Wilmington, DE to go to my dentist appointment.  Kevin came for moral support... I was feeling quite nervous after my last dentist appointment, when I had 2 cavities!  I had NO cavities this time.  Yay!  So then we ran a few errands while we were in Wilmington, and we had lunch at our favorite bar there and watched Kevin's favorite soccer team (Tottenham - they won!).  It's a really awesome British Pub named Stoney's, and they make amazing food (and their fish and chips is award-winning... Kevin loooooves it).  And in the evening we went out to dinner with Kevin's parents for his Mom's birthday.  We went to an amazing Italian restaurant that's near our apartment that we didn't even know about!  The food was amazing, and it's a cute little family-run place.  We'll definitely be going back!

We drove back up to the Philly area and went grocery shopping, and guess what I saw at the grocery store!!  BUMBLE!!!  Yes, the amazing abominable snowman from Rudolph was there.  We're still hoping to eventually find some sort of Bumble tree-topper for our Christmas tree.

Not too much else has been going on... Guinness has been more of a handful than usual lately (and by "handful", I politely mean "pain-in-the-ass"... just so we're clear).  He just turned 10 months old, and when we went to his vet appointment and weighed him, we found that our boy is 60 pounds!  So Kevin had guessed exactly right.  Our vet wants us to start the switch from Puppy dog food over to Adult dog food, so we just started that switch last night.  Our guy is growing up!  

Something new about Guinness is that he loves to hop up on the ottoman.  He tries to fit his whole body on it, but he's too large (or our ottoman is too small...)... so most of the time he just puts his front legs and body on it, and his back legs are still on the ground.  

He stayed like this (laying on my feet on the ottoman, chewing on his blue bone) for about 20 minutes the other day.

(he's giving himself a bath here)

I think he's becoming such a handsome pup!  

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!  Try to stay warm!  

It's starting to feel like Christmas!

McGee and I have had a very festive weekend!  We picked out our tree yesterday!!  And today we decorated our crappy apartment, and decorated our cute little tree.  Our tree is about 2 and half feet tall, and we have it sitting on our dining room table (which is counter-height... so it's a tall one) to try to keep Guinness away from it.  He's a little too rambunctious for us to attempt a tree on the ground, or anywhere near the ground.  We've had some fun acquiring some cool Christmas ornaments for our tree, and it was really fun to decorate it!  We don't have a tree topper yet, so we took the Bumble ornament (from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) and put him on top of our tree.  It works, I think!  I actually think I'll look for a larger Bumble to use as an official tree topper, because I like him up there.

Here are our stockings!

Here's our tree (and yes, that's Animal from The Muppets.  We also have the Swedish Chef).

 Here's Bumble!

 Here's a cool ornament we got in Hawaii.  It's a gourd that's been stained with Kona coffee, and the fish is the Hawaiian fish (the humuhumunukunukuapuaa), which we saw all over the place while scuba diving.

Our awesome lobster ornament from our roadtrip to Maine!

Another ornament we got in Hawaii.  It's a sea turtle with a santa hat. 

 Here's Guinness totally behaving!  So far he doesn't seem interested in the tree at all. He is, however, very interested in the stockings hanging by the fireplace.

Speaking of our little (big) guy... He's turning 10 months old tomorrow!!  And we have a vet appointment for him tomorrow too because he needs a booster shot, so we'll finally find out his weight!  I'm taking bets if anyone wants to take a guess!!  My prediction is 63 pounds.  McGee is guessing 60 pounds.

I hope everyone's December is off to a good start so far!!

Thanksgiving!

I can't believe Thanksgiving is already here!  We're heading to McGee's family's house tomorrow for a lovely dinner.  McGee's dad does the cooking (he's an awesome cook), but he doesn't like to bake or make desserts so I was hoping that I'd get to make some pies to bring for dessert (I have a craving for some pie making!), but I think we missed the boat on that one and McGee's cousin already claimed bringing pies!  So we're bringing a few bottles of wine instead.  I'm thinking maybe I'll have to make a pie this weekend for McGee and I.

I'm very excited for the Thanksgiving Day Parade tomorrow, because I think the weather is supposed to be kinda crappy!  I always love watching the parade when the weather is bad... which maybe makes me evil, but I don't know.  I just think it's so much more exciting when there's strong winds or it's crazy cold or it's rainy/snowy!  I think tomorrow New York is supposed to see some good winds and really cold temps.  So that'll make it interesting hopefully!  Speaking of cold temps, it has been FREEZING here (like in single digits with the wind chill!).  Today we had a non-lovely mix of rain, sleet, hail, and snow.  It was a gross day, and it definitely feels like winter.

Here's my favorite float from the Thanksgiving Day Parade!  Wait, I just noticed Kermit there too... I suppose he's my 2nd favorite.  But my 1st favorite is the Tom Turkey Float!  

Tonight we're going to watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which I think is a highly-underrated Charlie Brown movie.  I love it to pieces.

And that little movie just so happens to be the last item that I had left on my Fall Bucket List, so I'm happy to report that I checked off everything!  So, since that one's done, I thought it was time that I make my Christmas Bucket List.  I tried to make it look pretty!

And here's a picture of Guinness, just because.  He's trying to give me his paw, for his "paw" trick (in hopes of a treat).

I hope that everyone has a really wonderful Thanksgiving!!  I'll be thinking about you!!

Yuengling Brewery

This past weekend, McGee and I roadtripped up to the Yuengling (pronounced "Ying-Ling") Brewery!  It's about 1.5 hours away from our crappy apartment.  The Brewery was SO cool.  I've definitely never been in a brewery with anywhere near that much history (it IS America's Oldest Brewery, after all!).  It has been family owned and operated since it was established in 1829, and it is now owned by Dick Yuengling (the 5th generation to own it), and his three daughters all currently work in different sections of the brewery and are learning the ropes to eventually buy the brewery from their dad!

There were tons of cool stories, and unfortunately I can't remember a lot of them (I should've written them down right after - dang!!), but most of them were about what the brewery went through during Prohibition.  I remember that during Prohibition, Yuengling started up a dairy right across the street from the brewery, and that's where they were making a good amount of their money during that time (they made a lot of ice cream).  They were also still producing "near-beers" (0.5% alcohol) and their Porter, and their Porter was prescribed by doctors to aid anemia and it was also prescribed by doctors for women who were breastfeeding (yeah... weird...).  So, the tour guide said that during that time, women were breastfeeding their children for many years and there were a lot of people with anemia because they all wanted their prescriptions!!  People had to have their beer.  The tour guide also said that during Prohibition, a lot of people around the town would store Yuengling's beer for them (on the down-low of course... because it was quite illegal to have it!), including the Catholic church that is next to the brewery!  The Yuengling Dairy was also used to secretly store a lot of the beer.

One of the coolest things about the brewery is the underground caves that were hand-dug and used for fermentation and storage before there was refrigeration.  It took 10 years for these caves to be dug-out, and when you're walking through them you can see why!  It's nothing but rock!  I tried to take some pictures of the caves, but they turned out kind of blurry:

 A sign on the wall of one of the caves

Here are some copper sinks in the brewery

This is a cool stained glass ceiling in the brewing room!  Isn't it gorgeous?  

Gotta have hop storage.

And after the tour is over, they take you to a little bar area for some samples!  

Here's a picture of the Yuengling Dairy across the street:

And this is a picture of the outside of the brewery: