







Me loving sleepy Rocky
Christmas Eve we went to my parents' house. Shadow and Rocky had a blast playing with their cousins. Here they all are, waiting expectantly for scraps from dinner:
After dinner we opened stockings. The dogs got theirs first. They were pretty excited:
Rocky helped Henry open a gift:
Shadow was actually a really early Christmas present from me and Henry to ourselves. We just decided that if the right dog came along, we wouldn't wait until Christmas and let the opportunity pass us by.
My parents got me and Henry snowshoes, which is pretty awesome because mine are really old and Henry doesn't have any. Now hopefully we'll get a chance to go soon. Henry still needs snow boots to wear with the snowshoes.
When we got home, I decided on a whim to put up some last-minute Christmas lights. It was really cold outside and I froze my butt off. The wood stove helped out with that. Note our stockings hung by the fire. Henry got me a hand-made one with Tinkerbell on it.
We stayed up late drinking cocktails and watching Elf. Henry made popcorn for the movie, but we can't make popcorn in the kitchen because the popcorn maker always blows a fuse, so he made it in the bathroom:
Christmas morning we opened presents at home, which was really nice. Our first Christmas together in our own place. Henry got me Sketcher's Shape-ups, and I got him a Blu-Ray player. He also got me a beautiful blown-glass necklace. Then we headed to Henry's parents' house where we had Christmas dinner and even more presents. After that, we headed to the bar where Henry works because his bosses were working and we hung out with some of Henry's co-workers while his bosses waited on us for a change.

It's nice to have animal company on these late nights when the fiance is working. In addition to Kiki, we've also added another canine to our menagerie. We thought Rocky was getting lonely having moved away from my parents and their dogs, so we thought it would be a good idea to adopt another dog. A local shelter was having a Halloween event to promote vaccinations and show off their dogs, so we went to check it out. We ended up taking a juvenile German Shepard/mix on a trial basis to see if he and Rocky would get along. Rocky actually hated him at first, but now they're getting along pretty well. Shadow (new dog's name) is much more of a puppy than I thought, and he peed and pooped in the house and has been chewing everything. I think he's already getting close to being house-trained, though, which is great! He's also a super-sweet mellow teddy bear. I think he will fit into the family just fine, and we've already decided he's a keeper.
Rocky (left) and Shadow (right)
Rocky and Shadow keep me company all night, which is nice, except that Shadow wakes me up every hour or so wanting to play.
We finally got some basic channels to come in on our TV after much research and about $100 spent on an antenna and a converter box. It's really nice to just have the babble of the TV in the background while I'm futzing about the house.
We got a dryer but still have no washing machine, so it looks like I'm going to make the trip into town tonight to do some laundry. Unfortunately, the washers there are a little rough and have ruined several items of the fiance's clothing already.