Our Rather Simple Yet Chaotic Life: December 2009

Merry Christmas! Finally a spare moment to update the Blog. Work was a bit more hectic than typical this year due to the uncertainty in the economy and what impact it was going to have on us at work. Everything actually turned out better than what we had projected. I didn't have a single marathon night past 9pm this year which is out of the ordinary. I'm sure that Lisa and the kids would say 8pm was too late but it could have been much worse.

Christmas was pretty typical. Christmas Eve consisting of way too much finger food; we still have left overs. Christmas was spend overly full of food and putting together toys. Santa was entirely too good to the crumb-snatchers and was pretty good to me as well.

Lisa and I don't typically exchange Christmas gifts since we're so damn difficult to buy for; but since my birthday is so close to Christmas I get spoiled and my birthday becomes like my Christmas. I don't know if the previous sentence even made sense. Since I received way too many gifts on my birthday, I decided I was going to surprise Lisa with a Sony Reader. I fully intended to get in trouble for buying her a gift this year. Low and behold, Lisa broke the no gift rule as well and bought me a propane fueled smoker.

I fired up the smoker on Sunday and smoked a 5 pound chicken in about 3 hours. The propane works so much better than the Charcoal smoker I have. The temperature was easier to control and the wood bowl and water bowl are much easier to get to on the new smoker. I can't wait to try a brisket and a whole salmon. Even Lisa liked the taste of the chicken and she isn't a big fan of smoke flavored anything.

Sunday night we made a trip to the zoo to see the lights before they shut them off for another year. It was a perfect night to see the lights. The snow was falling and it wasn't overly cold thanks to the 3 layers of clothing I was wearing. The only downside to the zoo visit is that nasty, grumpy, bi**chy Katelyn showed up. I would have loved for someone to push me through the zoo in a stroller but not her. She wanted to whine that no one would carry her through the zoo.

Tonight we're heading to a friend's house for dinner. New Year's Eve will be spent at our house with Jill, Todd and the Kids and possibly one other couple and their kids. New Year's Day will be spent in front of the television (I may smoke a port roast too). And off to Saturday for our Cleveland Christmas.

Hope everyone has a happy and prosperous New Year! If you want to make sure you have a fun one, you need to buy one of these (Shawn got me one for Christmas). I almost choked! I am so out of practice!

And what post would be complete without pictures of the kids?