Post holiday ramblings

I really have nothing to blog about :)  I clearly gave up on my "31 day blog challenge".  Ooops.  I'm no good at structure and remembering to do things everyday.  I'm much more of a fly by the seat of my pants, listen to my emotions kind of gal.  I'll try my best to squeeze out a stellar post for you.

Christmas was nice.  Besides wishing we were home and it being 60+ degrees, we enjoyed the day.  We ate too much ham and laid around watching Christmas classics all day.  We enjoyed our last Christmas just the two of us.  Hard to believe in just a few months our little family will double in size.  Just crazy!  Good crazy, but crazy nonetheless.

Little Miss Nellie was quite the show stopper.  M jokingly tied a bow around her neck, thinking she'd paw at it until she untied it.  Nope.  She liked it!  She wore it all day.  See... (please ignore my crappy iphone pics)

Isn't she just too much?!  She's a great interlude to my next point.  I'm now going to plug the ASPCA-so if you don't like animals, charities or donating to a worthy cause, move along to the next blog :)  Two of our three pets are rescues.  The third we consider a rescue because he is from my mom's farm.  They don't neuter or spay (shame on you Momma!) and their cats breed like...well farm cats.  In the rough and tumble Ozark Mountain wilderness, none of them survive past the age of one.  We've seen more than our fair share get swooped up by hawks, not pretty.

So Elvis, the farm cat, became our first pet 5 years ago.  Charlie followed just 8 months later and Nellie came to join our family 2 years ago this March.  They can be a handful, but we love them, all their quirks and the fact that we can give them a loving home where they feel safe and comfortable.  It breaks my heart to know that people can look into the trusting eyes of an animal and abuse/neglect them.  They just want to be loved.

Animal adoption is such an amazing experience.  If you have the means to care for/adopt an animal (and that is VERY important), check out your local shelter!  There are so many wonderful pets just waiting to be loved.  If you're not the animal type or if you're at your max-like us, you can always donate your $ or time to the ASPCA.  I cry through every.single ASPCA commercial.  We go to the website for the shelter we got Nellie from every week to check out their new dogs and cats.  We can't go into petsmart on adoption days for fear of walking out with a new pet (its how Charlie came to be pet #2, seriously).  There's just something about soft furry animals needing some TLC that tears at my heart.

I've linked the ASPCA website several times above, you know, in case you wanted to visit it ;)  Every city/town/county, etc has an animal shelter, if you can't adopt or foster-volunteer, donate or whatever strikes your fancy.  Its a great feeling!  We volunteered at Zuma's Rescue Ranch last year.  I'm not sure how many horses were there, but they had so many great programs-of the four-legged AND human variety.  There was a special pasture for abused/neglected horses that were still too skiddish to be around humans.  The horses in that pasture all had deep scars, burn marks (other than their brands), patchy coats, were dangerously thin and had fearful eyes.  Just completely broke your heart.  Check out the website, great organization!

OK, I didn't mean to go off on that long of a tangent, my apologies.  I hope everyone is deflating from all the yummy Christmas food and looking forward to 2011!!!

The Tale of the Christmas Tree Eating Cat

Charlie is our "middle child".  We got Elvis and about 8 months later we decided it would be fun to have a "brother" for Elvis.  Elvis is ridiculously mellow and thought he'd enjoy a kitten in the house.  We went to the rescue to look at kittens and we saw a sweet little-malnourished and thin-but SPUNKY little guy.  He was so underweight and gaunt, but he had so much energy!  Naturally, we fell for him.  The next week, I brought him home.  We named him Charlie and our adventure with the crazy cat began :)  

From day uno, Charlie was a handful.  When I say handful, I actually mean two handfuls.  M was in the police academy, so I had to help Charlie adjust by my lonesome.  He slept on my face (literally) when he actually did sleep and the rest of the night he laid in the crook of my neck curled up with whiskers in my face, purring.  All.night.long.  I couldn't kick him out of our room yet though, because our sweet mellow Elvis apparently didn't like our idea of giving him a friend.  Elvis was pretty vicious toward baby Charlie for a couple months.  Now, they are the best of friends, but then, we were sure Elvis was going to off our new addition so I suffered through sleepless nights hoping this little skinny waif would calm down.  

Four years later, no dice.  He's STILL that same spunky wild crazy needy little cat.  We love him for it though.  We got him in August when he was 12 weeks old and when Christmas rolled around that year we realized we had a problem.  We put the tree (3-4 ft fake) up and Charlie ate the needles.  We moved the tree, but as you know if you have cats, they can get to anything :)  We didn't worry much until he started eating ornaments.  A glass ball fell off the tree and shattered.  Charlie ate the shards.  No I'm not kidding.  We took him to the vet and they didn't see any issues with his stomach, so we just watched him.  He had a lot of fake Christmas tree needles in his hairballs/vomit/poop, but no blood and no sign of trauma.  We shrugged it off.  When he wasn't eating tree needles and ornaments, he was napping on the tree skirt.  We couldn't (and still can't) get this Christmas loving cat away from the tree!

Every year when the tree goes up, Charlie is right there supervising the whole operation.  He plays in the tree and ornament boxes and bats around any loose tissue paper.  We usually put the tree up in mid-November and take it down in mid-Jan.  Charlie never leaves the tree's side.  Ever.  Last night we found him perched in his usual spot, on the window sill behind the tree, chewing on the fake needles.  He was nice enough to look up for me so I could get a seemingly innocent picture of him.  He's a riot!  Thankfully, he has no interest in chewing on the light strands, we'd really have a problem then. 

See, told ya ;)

*True Story*  Right after we got Charlie, I was talking to M (he was in the police academy) on my brand new (like 3 day old) cell phone.  It was plugged in to the outlet to charge and I was laying on my bed.  All of the sudden the phone died.  I thought I got a lemon.  After further investigation, I sat up and the phone cord came with me.  You know cell phone chargers don't have *that* long of charge cords.  Sweet little innocent Charlie had chewed through the power cord.  Luckily, that was the only time he chewed any kind of electrical cord...but at that point I knew we were in for trouble!

EDIT:  As I was finishing up this post I saw big brother Elvis saunter downstairs and head straight for the tree.  He looked at it for a second, rolled around on the tree skirt gazing at the lights from under the tree and jumped right on Charlie's favorite window sill, then started chewing on the tree.  Crazy cats we have.

He starts out much like Charlie.  Sweet innocent kitty face.

Then its all over.  I'm shocked we even have needles on our tree! 

Hope you and your pets/kids are enjoying this Christmas season!

A Rocky Mountain Christmas

M and I are looking forward to spending Christmas here at "home" this year!  Colorado is a place where NO day is off limits for skiing/snowboarding.

In fact, its a preferred way for St Nick to travel to the kiddo's nestled up in those frosty mountain towns ;)  

Its been unseasonably warm, 70 degrees yesterday.  Can you believe that?  We were putting up the tree in the office yesterday-in sweaters and turtlenecks of course, and we were sweating buckets!  Usually this time of year, its in the negatives and snowy.  We all, natives and transplants alike, HATE Oct-Jan here.  Its bitter cold, pipes freeze, car engines freeze and its too blistery to do much of anything accept sit by a fire and wait for Spring.  The ice doesn't help matters either...even in those expensive SUV's.  

Colorado loves Christmas.  The tourist traps are all decked out with lights and Christmas memorabilia of bygone times.  The famous 16th Street Mall is perhaps the most festive.

I think my favorite part about Christmas in the Rockies is the Rockies themselves.  The mountains in winter are just breathtaking.  When the snow blankets the entire range and the sun hits it it just right to make it sparkle-bliss!  For the record, they can keep the snow UP there.  

This was taken at Estes Park.  We went as far up as you can go.  It was heaven.  This wasn't even in the winter, this Summer.  Imagine how snowy the winters are!  This is also the trip we took this picture...

That is a 20+ foot embankment of snow.

Colorado is an amazing place.  

O' Christmas Tree

For as long as I can remember, Christmas has been my absolute favorite time of year.  When we were kids, holidays were a HUGE deal in our house.  My parents always did a fabulous job of making them special.  You know that warm cozy feeling you get just being completely happy with your family?  I love that!  Its the best part about the holidays.  Since getting married, M and I have tried to start our own traditions.  Today, we put up the tree-we listened to Christmas music, made Christmas cookies, lit Christmas tree scented candles, ate turkey day leftovers and just basked in the beauty that is Christmas.  Gosh I love this time of year!  

Without further ado, our tree :)

I love this tree.  Mainly because it represents our lives up until this point.  My mom gave me some of my childhood ornaments, M and I have made an ornament for every year we've been together, we got a ton when we got married and every year we try to pick out a handful that represent us at that point in time.  I love unwrapping all the ornaments and reminiscing about why we chose that ornament or where we were when we made that one.  Just gives you the warm fuzzies, doesn't it?

And in the dark, because I love the glow of the lights.  Yep we have like twice the strands as any normal tree :)

Last but not least, our little reindeer.  M has been looking for reindeer accessories for Nellie for EVER.  This weekend at Petco, he found them.  Never mind that they were $12, she hates them.  The good news is, we LOVE them on her, so we try to get them on her for a photo op every couple hours.  I think she's warming up to them ;)  She looks thrilled, doesn't she?!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving and start to the Christmas season!