Getting ready for Christmas!

It was nice to have a 4-day weekend so we could relax and spend time over the weekend getting ready for Christmas. We did a little bit of last minute shopping on Saturday, most of which was spent at King Soopers. I got an early Christmas present - the 4th and 5th Harry Potter DVD's - yippee! - so we watched no. 4 Saturday night.

Sunday morning we went to church, and then to one of my favorite stores - Whole Foods, where we bought olives and bread and ate enough free samples to fill us up until dinner. :) I thought I might go for a run when I got home, but Tiger had other plans. Usually he is very vocal when we get home. He is either there to greet us, sleeping on the couch, or comes running when we call him. Well, he was nowhere to be seen. We searched the entire house at least twice - every cabinet, every closet, tossed the covers around on the bed, and he was gone! We both felt it was very unlikely he had gotten out of the house that morning, but we searched neighborhood a couple of times, and asked some of our neighbors to keep an eye out for him. I was starting to feel pretty hopeless, and we both were worried that bringing two new cats into the house had pushed him over the edge. Chris went back to our bedroom to look again, and noticed a lump under the sheets - there was Tiger sound asleep, completely oblivious to our rabid and noisy search for him! What a brat! But I was so relieved he was okay, and we gave him some tuna juices just for being alive. We had searched for 1-1/2 hours! Aahh!

So, now it was time to start cooking. I had gotten my grandfather's Italian baked ziti recipe from my Aunt, and wanted to get it ready on Sunday so that on Christmas Eve (monday), we could just pop it in the oven. First I made some sauce, and then did some chores around the house while it cooked. Then Chris helped me make meatballs, which we simplified by using only ground beef instead of the 3 or 4 different kinds of meat I remember Pops using. Then I cooked some pasta, stirfried some eggplant, grated some cheese, and boiled 2 eggs ... now it was ready to put together! There was so much food it barely fit into our 13x9 pan. Well, actually it didn't fit because we have extra meatballs and pasta!

We barely had time to prepare dinner for Sunday before we had to rush over to our friend's Mollie and Rob's house. They have friends in town and wanted to go out to dinner without their 4 month old, Kelty, so we watched her for a few hours. It was fun, she is pretty easy to play with because she mostly just sits there. She is very fascinated by Chris' beard, it's funny. It's fun to have a baby to play with, but nice to hand her back to Mom and Dad at the end of the night! :) Thanks for reading!