A Suze Orman Christmas?

OK, I have to post this. As I was writing the post below, I had the Suze Orman Show on. She is actually telling someone she cannot remember the last time she spent money on a Christmas gift for somebody. Instead, she invites people over to her house and lets them pick something out of her closet, or just calls them. Are you kidding me? I mean, I know lesbians are "crafty" but come on. She's worth like millions right? People, please comment below! Is she for real?

Some Christmas Fun

Ah Christmas morning...how fun! I checked out "Michelle's Path" blog to see how she her husband spent it with their daughter Kayla, who was having her very first Christmas...you need to see the pictures! So cute. I can't wait to see that look on little Finster when he gets here! In the meantime, there are our other family members, and they had a blast as well. The Boys got way too many toys from us and people in our family. The cookies in the slideshow are from Charlie and Michele, and yes, they are DOG cookies! That's how spoiled they are. Enjoy!

The "Death Cake". Gregg made this 12, yes 12 layer cake to take to Christmas dinner. OMFG. Yes I said that.

Little Micky (top) and Maxie got a stick. Broken off the mesquite tree out front with love. Marty, Maxie's father who lives in the cage downstairs, got a celery stalk. Since he spends all day screaming he deserves it. He does know how to say "Merry Christmas" so I guess that counts for something.

I get to share the Boy's toys, but always pre-Lab slobber.

New Kitchen Aid products! Gregg thinks they're for him, but I will enjoy the fruits of that labor! (See "Death Cake" above!)

Opening gifts...Labrador style!

Dog cookies...from cousins Charlie and his wife Michelle. We left their house on Christmas Eve with bags of gifts for the Boys. Michelle's mother told us she is tired of buying gifts for Labradors; she was hoping to buy a baby gift this year! I'm hoping next year will be her chance.

Paintgate...Physical Evidence

The evidence is in on Paintgate...with photos!

These are the colors for the ongoing Paintgate scandal. I still don't think it looks bad...very green, but not bad! Remember, we don't know if we're having a girl or a boy, and we want to decorate in a jungle baby animal theme. So take a look, and who knows, if I need to change them to keep the peace, well, I'll do it...

I'm showing limited photos of color only, the nursery itself is barely started. It's an ongoing work.

Merry Christmas and Congrats to Paul and Chris!

Wow it's 7:30 PM on Christmas Day and I'm exhausted! I have some good pictures of our holiday to drag off the camera and post up, but tomorrow's another day. Right now, I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and also offer my congratulations to Paul and Chris over at the It's Daddies Plural blog. They got a call from their prospective birth mother this morning, and their long awaited little baby girl has arrived! She wasn't supposed to be here until Monday, but I guess Santa talked her out of waiting! I encourage you all to pop over and check out their blog...what an exciting Christmas present for them--way to go Santa!

A Quick Update

So sorry I've been lazy this month. I thought for sure December would be pretty bloggy, if only to use posting as an excuse to stop eating holiday treats which seem to be everywhere. As usual this year Gregg did most (all?) the holiday shopping for the family but at least I've been wrapping stuff. I don't get it. Whenever I wrap gifts they come out horrible. They look like someone wrapped them and dropped them down the stairs. As gay as I am who'd figure it? Oh well at least I can throw together a fabulous dried pasta gift basket with my eyes closed. Here's a hint for the straight readers: As I realized this weekend, you know you're gay when you're holding up the line at Cost Plus (that store alone is a ringing gaydar alarm) while you and the cashier, who you can tell owns at least one cat, discuss the fact that lately a good malbec is your favorite Argentinean red and you wish the bulk of German Rieslings weren't so darn sweet. Oh and my gratuitous we'll have a baby someday ending to this post it that hopefully next year we can add another stocking to the fireplace. Now that's sweeter then a Riesling!

Disco Holiday

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Ripley & Chase vs. Old St. Nick

During Christmas, the tradition is to bring your kid (or your two year old Labradors) to see Santa. That's what we did today. Of course, you don't usually take your kid to the park to chase tennis balls for half an hour first to calm them down. (Or do you? Well whatever works...) I asked the Boys to sit next to the chair. Santa asked me if I wouldn't rather have them sit on his lap. Together that's roughly 210 pounds of excited to be here Labs, so I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do that. The reply? "I'm Santa, I can do anything". Well can't argue with that.

I'm not sure they're gonna get what they asked for, a swimming pool and a basket of kittens. Santa told them he could tell they've been good but then again he's a really old man. The Boys agreed with Santa, but left out the part that in the last five minutes Ripley's tail cleared 3 feet of product from the dog biscuit shelf and Chase relieved a woman of a bag of rawhide bones she was planning to buy, but on the other hand, have you ever seen dogs who can smile for the camera like that?

Shiny Object to Distract Us From Paintgate

OK OK I get it about the paint! I know I need to tone down my craziness a bit about projects; I guess it's just the perfectionist in me. And per requests, I'll post some pictures. If you want my boyfriend's take on it, you can see his point of view here. It's not exactly pretty.

HOWEVER, in light of this and recent events, a distraction is called for, and my friend Rik has the perfect one on his blog. Take a look at this post and tell me it isn't one part funny, two parts dead on, and a dash of evil genius.

Painted Into A Corner

Well I did a bad thing this weekend. I painted the baby's room. Well that part's good, it looks nice. The problem is I tend to get obsessive about projects, and that happened with this. See a few months ago I agonized forever about what colors to paint it. We don't know if we're going to have a boy or a girl, so we wanted something that would work either way. The room was sort of a dark brown, too depressing for a baby, so we wanted to paint it and replace the carpet with wood and generally get a real nursery ready in advance. Gregg and I went to Home Depot and after looking at every chip in the store, decided on sort of a sage color called "restful". So the day after Thanksgiving I headed off to get the paint. The problem was when I got there, instead of just getting what I needed, I let myself wander over to the paint chips and started thinking maybe there was a better color. And after 20 minutes of looking, there was! Marsh fern, much brighter then boring old restful And if I painted two of the walls this gorgeous thyme green, this will be the most fabulous baby room EVER! I'm sure G. won't care, after all they are still in the "green" family. So I called him up and told him and he said, in a sort of defeated tone, if that's what you want, get it. I ignored what I could sense was my nagging better judgement and got it.

I got home, used the primer, and the next day painted the walls. Came out pretty good, Gregg liked it too. Now the ceiling needed something. We had decided on some color called "yellow mist", which was a sort of off white yellow wash color that went great with "restful". On Sunday I went back to Home Depot and got...yeah you know it's coming..."highlight", an off white with an almost imperceptible amount of green in it, which would be perfect for the wall colors. It looks white, but pulls it all together plus has a very reassuring quality to it. So I called. Twice. But no answer, he was at the gym. What the heck, he was OK with the wall colors, once he sees how this looks with it he'll love it. I bought "highlight".

Gregg got home a few minutes after I did and he had some groceries with him. As he was putting the limes away, I started to mention how I saw a great new color for the ceiling. Did you ever know that when you smash limes on the kitchen floor, the juice comes out a lot thicker then you'd imagine. Stickier too. He was pissed. I won't go into all the details of it, but there was a beauty of a fight. Looking back, I can see it was my fault. I took something we both decided on and changed it to be my way. I sometimes have a habit of doing that. We ended up keeping the paint. I think it looks good. G has no opinion since he hasn't seen it yet; made some comment about going into the baby's room once the kid turns three. We pretty much made up. I just feel kind of guilty. So if you're reading this babe, I'm sorry. I'll try to work on it. And you'll keep forgiving me like you have for over 11 years now. Cause you love me.

The room still looks fantastic however.