Christmas Eve on Sunland Avenue

Cristina is working today, so I'm kind of doing the big meal alone. That's okay. I'm making a 19-lb. turkey, homemade dressing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, corn casserole, mashed sweet potatoes, and for dessert: pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and apple pie (all pies from Costco). Your basic Thanksgiving meal.

I haven't blogged in a while and I need to. Sometimes just posting comments on everybody's blog feels like blogging!

The news to report is that Cristina's friend from Germany, Marion, is visiting us right now. She came a week ago with her boyfriend Harald.


Cristina's mom arrives tomorrow night. In preparation for having 3 house guests, we finally got the computer room turned into a legitimate guest room. We assembled the antique bed that we used when we were first married. We bought a new mattress for it, as well as one of those cool mattress bases from IKEA that has storage.

An actual guest room!

The upstairs loft is finally a usable sitting room!

The dog and cats are doing fine. Vivien is having less accidents. Not sure if it's because she's learning to prefer to go outside, or if we're just being more vigilant. Probably a bit of both.

Dogs and cats living peacefully together is a nice change

The cats love to sleep on our bed. They look so cute curled up on the soft, down quilt that I can't resist taking pictures of them. Ah, to be a cat.