December

We have had a busy December.  Lot's of Christmas parties and other fun things.  

Here are some some iPhone pics of the first part of the month.

Dot posing by our tree.

Our 3rd Annual Christmas Cookie Exchange at Rachel and Brandon's

A new park recently opened.  They covered the interstate and turned it into a park to connect "uptown" and "downtown" Dallas.  It is really neat.  Gourmet food trucks park along the side and there is a playground, dog park and you can play games like table tennis, croquet,  and there is a putting green.

Brett's parents came in for the night to be "Santa".  We made these cookies and I took them to the Christmas parties we had that weekend.

Brett was on call for the weekend in Ft Worth and Nelson and Winston had a Christmas party there that night we wanted to go to so we decided to spend the day and night there and take the pups.
We went to the park.

Stockyards

Brett and Nelson with "Margarita".  Nelson got her when we all went to Costa Rica.  We carried her around with us and pretended like she was a part of the group when we were on that trip!

At Nelson's Christmas party.  I can't find the pics I took of their decor but it was awesome of course!

We stayed at the Sheraton and this was right across the street.  It is called Fort Worth Water Gardens.
There were 4 different "water gardens" and it was really pretty.
The Sheraton allowed dogs at no charge.  Something good to know if you travel with pets.  La Quinta doesn't charge either.

On our way home we went to Bass Pro to do some Christmas shopping.  The dogs shopped til the dropped!

Post Vacation

Vacation was awesome. I said I was going to update the blog during our trip, but it took too long to try to type on the iPhone. Plus, we were just too busy!

We kinda feel unhealthy and blaaaa after eating out 3 meals a day for 14 days, drinking lots of wine and having dessert with almost every dinner and sometimes in between!!!

So, I got on Pinterest to look for some healthy recipes and this is what I cooked tonight:

Veggie Burger on Roasted Cabbage

We have NEVER even eaten a veggie burger much less cooked one. We obviously usually go for the juicy beefy burger, but this was pretty good and oh so healthy it seemed!

Recipe for VEGGIE BURGER

Recipe for the ROASTED CABBAGE

I followed the recipes for the most part. I used 2 eggs instead of flax eggs like the recipe asked mainly because I have no clue what that is! I cooked the burgers in the pan and when the cabbage was done I stuck the burger on the cabbage and melted feta and cheddar cheese over them in the oven.

I also added a little mayo.

Poor Brett had to dive right back into reality the day after we got back. He worked a 15 hour day. He will have 4 days off this month, but the rest of the time he will be really busy. He said he got to do surgery to correct an umbilical hernia today so that was fun for him. Just a few more months of General Surgery and then he will actually be doing Oral Surgery until he is done. Yay!

I spent my morning with my friend Katie and her triplets. They are 2 months now and SO cute and sweet!!!

No Snow in Tahoe and Rental Car Games

We are officially on vacation! We didn't book any hotels for the trip because we were not sure how long we wanted to stay at each place or exactly where we wanted to go. And now we are really glad we didn't. The plan was to ski Heavenly in South Lake Tahoe until Sunday and then head to Sonoma/Napa Valley.

We knew there had been no snow in Tahoe but we still though there was enough to ski on- maybe. We learned today from talking to a few locals that only a few slopes are open and there is only artificial snow. We decided the skiing would not be very good- crowded and icy- and it wasn't worth renting skis and buying lift tickets for that. So we drove around half of Lake Tahoe and are now headed to Sonoma. Since we have extra days from not skiing we decided we will go to Yosemite National Park before heading South because it is supposed to Be beautiful.

A pic at the lake. It's beautiful and we want to come back when we can ski.

A shot of the mountains. Not even a patch of snow. They said they had 20 feet this time last year.

Anyway onto our rental car. We didn't reserve one because we thought we would when we arrived. We knew that it was going to be more because we were getting a one way, but the quotes we got today were ridiculous. We went to 5 of the counters and were told it would be $1300-1500 for their economy car. So we got on our phone and I found A quote from Alamo for $550- still lots but much less. So I showed the budget rental people that quote and asked if they could match it. They beat it by upgrading us to an SUV, not a tiny Kia, with a gps for $388. Plus I have a 30% coupon I found online I can use when we turn it in! Their quote was originally $1500. Pretty crazy huh! We were thanking our iPhones for that one. They just paid for themselves! I think we were trying to make ourselves feel better since we had to buy Brett a new one Sunday since his was STOLEN from the VA Hospital. Ugh.

Anyway- I will try to update on our adventures!

Sent from my iPhone