Christmas week and all through the house

Just think, in a week it will all be over.  In a week, the presents will be unwrapped, praised, complained about, boxes will have been played with more than toys, awkward holiday dinners will be over and the dishes will have been washed.  And, we'll likely be eating something other than ham...but I don't know, it's a pretty big ham.  Merry Cheesemas everybody!

There are only a few decorations left to get pictures of.  There are trees everywhere.  These two sit next to my desk.  My Mom's ceramic tree was all white, so when I saw the little one, it reminded me of her.  

And, there's one in the bathroom...because why not.  Sydney always put up a pink tree in this bathroom, but I found this white one at goodwill for $2 including 12 little ornaments, then spent another $12 on additional decorations.  Twelve little balls was not enough.  Christmas is about excess!  And, I excessed it up.  I don't think it's too cheesy.

I don't think I gave quite enough attention to this little tree.  This is the tree with the oldest ornaments on it.  These are from my Grandparents and from my parent's first Christmas.  Rob found a cute way to display them that doesn't draw attention to their condition, but lets me enjoy a nice display.  

And, we can't forget the reason for the season.  I've seen a lot of these, but this one used almost the exact same molds that my Grandmother used for the one she made my Mom, except in that one, the baby Jesus can be removed from the manger and our angels are different.  I've had mine for 30+ years and my Mom's would likely be 65 years old.  And, these are still my favorite.  

I took the CRV to the shop last week for regular maintenance and a couple of minor recalls.  When the man asked how many miles and I said 3100, he was so skeptical that I started the car to check...3109.  And, caught him looking over my shoulder to make sure the old man hadn't forgotten how numbers work.  We drive.  I swear we do.  But, I don't commute, so we mostly drive on weekends.  Maintenance was smooth.  They gave me a ride home and I took a Waymo back, just for the lark.  If you're not familiar, Waymo is driverless.  Rob said he had anxiety when I sent him this picture.  Couple times when we were approaching a hill, it slowed to a crawl in heavy traffic.  Scared the be-cheesus out of me.  It took a route through my neighborhood on streets I'd never driven on and I said "you're lost aren't you?"  Thankfully, it didn't answer.  But, suddenly, we were at a red-light.  It had driven there rather than make an unprotected left turn onto a busy street, so my overall rating is that it's overly conservative, but that's not really a bad thing, right?  The Uber driver that brought me home crossed 4 lanes or traffic at 70 mph because she'd nearly missed her exit, and that made me feel a lot less safe.

I made my sugar cookies yesterday.  Well, actually, I made them last weekend and just got around to baking them yesterday.  No frosting this year.  I told Rob it was too much.  I think it cheesed him off a little, but he was a good sport about it.  I keep talking up this year's cake to take his mind off it.  Orange flavored.  One red layer and one green layer, each cut in half horizontally and alternated red/green/red/green with orange filling and a buttercream frosting as close to white as I can get.  Then, I'm going to paint bay leaves with white chocolate and peel off the leaf, leaving me with a white chocolate "petal" for a poinsettia that I'll place on top with some silver balls in the center.  I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...

We'll see.  

Cheese'nRice, surely I can follow a simple set of instructions.  

I made homemade chicken dogfood to try to give Bella something good to eat and she turned her nose up at it.  Dottie says she'll be glad to help me out and not let it go to waste.  It had a lot of dog friendly veggies and ground chicken and I cooked it in the crockpot, then ran it though the food grinder that attaches to my Kitchenaid.  I even tasted it and all it needed was a little salt and pepper and cheese and I could have fed it to Rob.  

It's clearly going to be a very cheesy Christmas around here.  If you're not having fun this week, try to be cheesy.  Remember  that by next Monday, it will all be over and in a couple weeks, it will all be back in the box.  And, in a few months, it will be time to do it all again...oops, lost my positive spin there didn't I.  

Merry Cheesemas Everybody!!  And, stick it to the man...you know which one.