Lucy update

for those of you who knew our Lucy ... you know she was the sweetest girl and deserved better than we could give her. Well, she got it! She has sweet parents that have all the time in the world for her! Look how happy she is here! Here she is giving back to the community! She volunteers now! HA!

Jingle Bell Run

So we might have been secretly excited when they told us we couldn't do the 5K with our stroller this morning, but our 1 mile run was pretty invigorating! It was freezing outside! The kids had their stroller decked out in Christmas lights, and we had so many jingle bells on we sounded like Santa's sleigh! We did the run and then sat at Brookside By Day and had a fantastic breakfast, stayed warm, and watched the run from the inside instead!

Here's a blurry picture of Braden with Santa ... sorry it's a picture of a picture from my phone! My camera is broken! Too bad he's not the real thing or I'd have Braden ask him for a camera! HaHa!

Our tiny tree ....

Next time I'll just buy Hershey's!

So Braden and I hung out for a bit today with our friend Josh and he showed us how to make chocolate! It was fun to get to see how much work really goes into this! Who knew!

First you get the bean .... and you have to take as many of the shells out that you can
After you bake them for about 20 minutes, you pick through it one more time ...
some helpers ...

You have to carefully measure out how much you have because you'll need to know later when you start adding your other ingredients ...

This is the grinder that Josh got for his birthday ... I think it came from India!

Then Braden helped him add cocoa butter, milk powder, and powdered sugar

after about 9 hours of turning the grinder on and off every half hour, it is done in the grinder. There's some stuff I missed in between that and when it came out of the fridge, but this is what we did to the chunk that was already done! We melted it down and poured it into molds for his parents' Christmas party.

Then I licked this bowl!!!!!!!

I know Josh doesn't read my blog, but if you are ... I'm kidding about the title. I think the hobby is way cool, and it was awesome to be a part of it for a day!

Dog-sitting

Braden and I have been staying the past 4 nights in Tulsa dog sitting for our good friends the Bartons. They have 3 dogs, and we have been having such a great time. It's so nice to be here in town ... especially since I was on call and spent half the day yesterday at work! UGH! I really wish we could live in Tulsa! I love my house, I love my house, I love my house, ....

Anyway, here's a couple of pictures of 2 of the 3 dogs. The dogs and Braden are hilarious together. When we get home tomorrow, I'll work on getting Braden's Santa pictures loaded!