Lamb ravioli

Every time we eat pasta, Kenny has to make it. We have not purchased any for at least a year. He loves breaking his pasta maker out and whipping up some noodles. The other night, on Good Eats, we watched Alton Brown make ravioli and decided we could totally do that. The next night we made lamb ravioli and it was delicious! There are a few things we would change next time, but for our first try, they were great! It was a bit time consuming, but really enjoyable! If you have a pasta maker (the hand crank kind) I would suggest giving this a go. If you have to roll your pasta out by hand, I would not suggest this. That would take FOREVER.

Breckenridge snow sculptures

Breckenridge holds the International Snow Sculpture Championships every year, and this year we decided to see what it was all about. I loved it! We headed up there with Kris and Patrick on Saturday and spent the afternoon walking around.

My favorite was the bear with the rv, but it didn’t even place! I wish these pictures showed how detailed these sculptures were, but the sky matched the snow, so it was a bit hard to capture the contrast.

Olympus Stylus 1030 sw

All I want is my new camera. I have ordered it, three times now, and I still don’t have it.

It is shockproof up to 6.5 feet and since I dropped my current one and broke it, this is perfect. I totally blame it on the drag queen. It was all her fault. Thanks a lot Fantasy Fest. The long and short of it is that I saw a drag queen (one of millions) dressed up as the queen of hearts and she looked fantastic. I was going to get a picture with her and as I handed, or maybe tossed, the camera to Kenny in all my excitement, I dropped the camera. The pictures still turn out ok, although they are getting worse, but the screen is broken.

The new camera is shockproof, waterproof, freezeproof, dustproof and this all hopefully means Laurenproof. We saw it at Sams for $320 and I was convinced I could find it cheaper. I went home, looked online, and found it for $210! What a deal. After I ordered it, it didn’t process and when I called, every single person I spoke to was horribly rude and somehow I wound up increasing my total to $340. Sooooooooo, I canceled that one with much resistance from the company and ordered it off of Amazon for $280. A bit more, but still cheaper then Sams. I received an email last night saying it was backordered and when I called this morning, they said it is actually canceled because they are not getting anymore. I found another one and called to make sure they had it in stock. I should be getting it this weekend.

Pickled herring meet Jack Daniels

I don’t know why we do it and I don’t know who started it, but ever since I have known Kenny, on New Year’s everyone eats rye bread with pickled herring and cream cheese. It is disgusting and I do not participate. I have been in charge of buying the herring the past few years, but that is my only involvement with it. The fish is grey and in a sour cream sauce. How appealing, no?

For some reason, this year, a new nasty tradition was started. Pass around the bottle of Jack! Why on earth did something think this to be a good idea? First, we are going to eat some nasty fish and then we will wash it down with some booze. But not delicious booze, the gross stuff.

Pocket Shock It

Kenny's brother, Kris, gave him this game when he came out for Christmas. You can have from 1-4 players. Each person holds a corner and a song begins to play. When the song stops and a red light appears in the middle, everyone has to squeeze their corner. The last person to do so gets shocked. Like, really shocked! Kenny made me play until I lost and, let me tell you, I am not a fan.

Then after some delicious beverages, we all decided to try it between various body parts. Skin has to be in contact with both sides, so the armpit seemed like a genius place to try.

Thank God for high ceilings

This is what happens when Uncle Kenny and Uncle Karl get bored.

Goodbye 2008, hello 2009!

A quick recap on the holidays:

The holidays are done and gone. Too bad. I had a really great time. Kenny's family was here and we hung out pretty much every single day. A new family member joined us this Christmas too! Delanie McKee. She is adorable. Karl and Mon did a great job making that one!

Drinking and eating.

Christmas morning was spent at our house. We like to make breakfast for everyone-waffles and fruit sauce, eggs, and sausage. Then we headed over to the Bingmans for the rest of the day, and pretty much the rest of the year. Everyone came in on different days, but we were all here for new years.

Drinking and eating.

On new years, we all ate pickled herring (well, most of us did) and a new tradition of taking a shot of Jack Daniels started. Straight from the bottle of course.

More drinking and a lot more eating.

Hailey's birthday and Delanie's baptism were just a few other important dates rolled in.

Drinks, food.

I also loved how not being at work and rarely looking at a computer made my focus change. My stress reduced. Not knowing what is going on in the economy for 2 weeks was fantastic! Out of sight, out of mind I say! I was never too stressed about it because there is no point in stressing about what you can't change, but I didn't like always knowing what was going on, good or bad. It was nice to just enjoy friends and family.

I've said it before and I will say it again…Kenny's family (extended included) are some of the nicest people in the entire world! I enjoyed every minute I spent with them and look forward to their next visit.

Oh, first blog of the new year, so I suppose I should address resolutions. F resolutions. They are just more to live up to. Frankly, I don’t have the time.