CHRISTMAS!

Christmas was very fun and laid back this year.  Eric's mom came to the house and stayed with us.  We had a good looking tree thanks to our trip with the Fricks and had plenty of gifts for the three of us (well four - Mason had a few too!)
 

 (Miss Kevin in her handknit socks I made her!)

We opened presents, had the traditional coffee cake and egg casserole breakfast, opened more gifts and then cooked lunch together.  Miss Kevin helped me make a beautiful ham and set a good looking table (if I do say so myself!)

The highlight for me was the very last gift of the morning.... (drumroll please...)

TA-DA!!

My brand new DSLR camera!  My original one was a gift from my husband on the eve of our wedding and was stolen from his truck in our driveway in September.  He replaced it with a bigger badder one this time that even takes HD video.  I am LOVING it!  Its a Nikon vs a Canon so I have to relearn everything but I'm just so grateful for a husband who spoils me so much!

Duck Hunting

Part of my Christmas vacation includes activities which cater to my caveman tendencies, the most prominent of which is my primal need to hunt for food.  Luckily, American society has provided grocery stores as the main source of food for people like me since my hunting abilities are "limited" at best.  Even so, this duck hunting trip is yet another in a series of outings this year which leads me to believe I'm getting better at this.  As with any duck hunting trip, this one began before dawn.  It continued as many duck hunting trips do, without any ducks.  We deployed our gear and sat in the mud from 6:45 to 8:45 with no action.  Luckily, Lenny and I find this lack of action quite amusing and use up the dead time with sarcastic remarks like "the birds will be here any minute" and "they really start flying after 9".  Amazingly enough, one single group of birds did come in at 9, but landed just out of shotgun range to our right in the back of the cove.  After watching them on the water for a half hour we decided to perform the "famed" stalk maneuver which has never worked before but was always referred to as an effective way of getting birds.  We decided to sneak through the water behind some grass to get closer to the birds and amazingly this worked.  Only problem was, they kept swimming further back in the cove looking for food and we were no closer to them than we were before.  After 45 minutes of this nonsense, I whispered to Lenny that this would never work and in fact has never worked before.  He cut his eyes at me and said that quitting was not an option.  We continued after the ducks in stealth mode and did in fact sneak up on them and took three out of the four birds!  This is my first ever successful stalk and I'm proud to say we didn't quit.  Behold natures bounty harvested by cunning, perseverance, and gunpowder!  Wood ducks are pretty up close and these were no different. 

Many thanks to my lovely wife for taking pictures of more dead animals than she would like.  Here is a pic of the noble hunters and their take for the day. 

Sightseeing

After relaxing and skiing we headed to Boone and Blowing Rock for some sightseeing and shopping.  We had lunch at a great place in Boone (a friend of a friend owns it) and took a peek at Appalachian State's campus.  It was a dreary, rainy day and we walked around Blowing Rock. They had a cute little park and we used a timer (and self portrait stance) to snap a few photos of ourselves...

We also found a great little knit shop (eek! - and um, not by chance) where Eric picked out yarn for his new hat (old one was itchy) and I found a little something for myself too!  You can check out hat details here and here but the yarn...I'll go ahead and share a sneak peak with you...

mmmmm....Malabrigo.  lol.  All you knitting people know what I mean!
We had a great trip to the mountains and came home refreshed and ready for all the Christmas festivities!

Holiday Skiing

After we recuperated with our napping and knitting we did hit the slopes at Sugar Mountain in NC.  Eric tried to teach me how to snowboard, and once UP I was quite successful, but getting up off my butt... well that was a different story entirely.  After about an hour on the bunny hill (50 minutes of which was like horrendous situps trying to go from laying flat on your back to standing on a awkward board on slippery icy snow) I gave up and put skis on (Eric kept his snowboard - b/c he knows what the devil he's doing) and up the lift we went...

On the first trip down Eric remembered the 'secret' to getting from your ars to standing on a snowboard.  Yeah, that would have been good to remember before.  Alas, I skied - he snowboarded (it was 11 degrees with blowing snow) so we both froze, they closed the slopes to groom and home we went to warm up (with dinner and some wine). 

Skiing vacation....check!

Now onto the sightseeing....

Christmas Vacation

Before the big holiday and things getting really crazy, Eric and I decided to use our vacation (well - use it or lose it) and take a break.  We opted for a trip to the mountains in NC for some skiing, and sightseeing and ruckus.  But before we could get to that, there was alot of unwinding and by that I mean....
Napping...

and Knitting...

and more napping...

and then more knitting...

(sorry there are no pictures of me actually knitting, but the other one... well he was napping!)  LOL.  We enjoyed relaxing and unwinding (and knitting and napping) and then we did get to all that skiing and sightseeing business.  Next time...