Christmas

Last week, Dan & I were in the Midwest, visiting his family for Christmas. It was a good trip, but I'm not going to lie: I'm happy to be home with the kitties. I missed them a lot. (Poor Emmett is still so new he squeaks and we were worried about how he'd take us up and disappearing. (The answer is: freak out, hide from the pet sitters and be scared of us when we came back before (eventually) deciding to be a massive love Emmett. He woke me up at absurd o'clock this morning purring incredibly loudly, tromping all over my head and shoving his head violently (and repeatedly) into my hand).) The kitties are happy that we are back, too. (Gidget has stuck to my side since we've gotten home like she's afraid I'm going to leave again. She is currently using my wrist is a pillow. Not helpful while typing.)i

Anyway, while it turned out nice, the trip didn't start out all that great. This was what we ran into in Oklahoma:

Oklahoma is not normally that white and ice-covered. (Though it is normally that boring.) Of course, after the ice and snow started, the roadtrip became even less stellar as we (Dan) got a speeding ticket. 69 in a 55. Oops.

But then things got better because were got to where we were going (without additional snow or speeding tickets) and got to visit with family and do Christmas-y type things. (There might have been a yarn-buying trip or two in there, too, which I'll get to in a later post.) Aside from normal family-visiting-type things, we did have a bit of touristy fun. We went to the Missouri Botanical Garden's Garden Glow.

It was massively crowded and quite chilly, but very pretty. And I enjoyed it even more because it resulted in a picture of Dan and me that looks like it was shot on a bad 70s background.

That picture amuses me greatly.

And speaking of amusing, we ran across this somewhere in Oklahoma.

Hot Mama Pickle-in-a-Pouch. And even more amusingly, the part of the pouch that is covered by the box? It says "Sassy Pickle". Yep. Just what everyone needs when dealing with the boringness of Oklahoma. A Sassy Hot Mama pickle. Yum.