Christmas and such

Hope everybody had a very Merry Christmas!

We went and celebrated with my grandma on Christmas Eve and spent the night with my mom that night. We woke up and had our traditional sausage and egg breakfast sandwiches then we went and ate dinner at my favorite brother's house. He could not leave the house because he was on-call (yeah, cable guys are even on call during the holidays), so he made us a nice salad and potroast. I had some of the best wine at my brother's house.

We came back here on Christmas day and I had a donut to celebrate the holiday and we opened presents. Angie got me a cute bathrobe, a gorgeous rose gold necklace and earrings that are sooo gorgeous (she says that pretty girls should wear pretty things), a dvd, a little lit-up bakery as part of a little Victorian Christmas village, some pans that I asked for (nice pyrex ones), a pug calendar and pug socks because I'm totally in love with our pug, some dish towels that are totally Christmassy and I'm like obsessed with dish towels for some reason (every time I'm at our dollar store, one mysteriously winds up in the cart) plus two ornaments and one that I can't think of right now. We were starting our tradition of exchanging one Christmas ornament per year, but I totally dropped the ball when I ran out of time to make it. However, leave it to Angie to get two ornaments, so she said that one of them can be from me to her. How thoughtful is she? She filled my stocking with the cutest nail polish, cute little popcorn containers I've been eyeing plus an O magazine. My mom gave us $100 bill, which is totally awesome. I mostly got Angie Old Navy stuff because she has practically no clothes that fit her now that she has lost almost ninety pounds. She is into about a men's size large (XL if you ask her because she wears everything several sizes too big).

I did quite a bit of low carb baking, including chewy chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, coconut brownies and drumstick treat on the day before Christmas Eve, which was fun. It's nice to be able to have treats that won't make me sick, but I need to remember that they are indeed treats and do not need to be consumed daily. I left my mom and brother with some of the healthy treats and the rest are in the freezer, except for the drumstick treat, which probably wouldn't freeze well anyway. Plus, it's a nice option for us to eat when we are back on plan with eating low carb. I didn't go crazy over the holiday, but I certainly indulged enough where I do not feel like I need to make up for it because I was cheated in any way.

We are celebrating at my dad's house with my five brothers and sister on New Year's Eve Day, which should be fun. I hope all the boys can make it. Angie has a special question for my dad, which makes me nervous, but she is old-school like that. Everybody loves her. My dad was apprehensive about me having a girlfriend at first, but he sees how good she treats me and how happy we are together and last time he hung out with her, he was telling her what a good listener she is. She really hit it off with my grandma too, who was excited that she had somebody to tell her stories to who has never heard them... You know, the "80 years ago when I was a kid..." versions.

When I was at my brother's, I did this dance game on the xbox 360 connect, which was pretty cool. I was jsut happy that I could master most of the moves without being on my cane, so clearly, the knee front is on the up and up. I'm going to start doing Pilates on Netflix and last night, we picked up a Jillian Michaels' workout dvd, so I'm still putting my health at the top of my list.

Day-After-Christmas Menu:
- Sausage and cheese three egg omelet
- Three chewy chocolate chip low carb cookies
- BLT on an oopsie with mayo and cheese
- Drumstick treat