The drive to Asheville was pretty uneventful; I think out of the 12 hours of driving, I did about 8.5 of it, and my mom drove the rest. Wrigley was awesome in the car, even though he was a bit cramped at first. Mom was impressed.

We got in about 8:30, and all that was on our minds was sleep.

Monday started out by grabbing breakfast at the Waffle House. I think I prefer a Denny's to the WH, myself. Then it was back to the house, where I finished putting my christmas cards together, and my mom licked and stamped them while I took a shower.
We then dropped the cards off at the post office (where it said that only vill would get her card before Christmas, good thing there are 12 days of that holiday, huh?) and headed from there to brave the Christmas shopping crowds. We lucked upon a fantastic Chinese lunch while looking for the bed bath and beyond where we were getting Claire's (my sister) kitchen-aid mixer present from my mom. What a mess, let me tell you! I managed to find a parking spot within two minutes, though, my skills are impressive.

Claire came home for dinner, and we went grocery shopping for Christmas dinner -- cornish game hens, mashed potatoes, bread (mix for the bread mixer I'd donated to Claire, since I wasn't using it much at all), corn, asparagus, and deviled eggs. It's not a holiday in my book without deviled eggs.

Then, it was time to sleep again. People go to sleep early 'round these parts.

Tuesday was hectic. Claire had to work, and I had my dad's birthday present to send out, and we had a lot of food to prepare, as Christmas dinner was going to be at 11:30 so vill could make it before she had to work. Unfortunately, no pack and ship places were open on christmas eve, so we'll have to mail those out after Christmas. We stopped for that night's groceries, and headed back home so I could start boiling and chopping and cooking cookies.

I was doing a good job, when halfway through the dogs had to go out. Normally, Wrigley never goes out without a leash, but Claire had been taking them out the front and back to the fenced in pen she has in the back yard. I thought I could do the same.

Boy was I wrong! I got them to the pen, and in the pen just fine. However, it was a rainy day, and I didn't want to leave them out there wrassling in the mud (as they were about to do), and so tried to bring them back in before they were ready, and didn'thave Wrigley's lead.

Well, as I was reminded, Wrigley is monstrously bad at being offlead, and wasn't ready to come in yet, so he took off. Now, he's got four feet to my two, and thus there was no way I was catching up to him and Cogan, my sister's dog, who'd gone off on the jailbreak with him.

After I chased them about a quarter mile, I lost sight of them, ran back to get the jeep, have my mom call my sister and started looking for them. After about 5 minutes I started hearing a loto f barkingand figured it had to be them. I cut through a couple yards, and saw them on the other street, alive and well. At this point, when I called them, they came over all obedient-like, and hey-how-you-doing-ish. I shoved them in the car and we went home.

At this point, all I wanted to do was sleep, but instead I finished up the last of the chocolate chip cookies and made sure the potatoes were mostly boiled.

I started supper for that night, and just as we were done, vill called, for we were to see The Two Towers that night. We managed to recognize one another and then drooled over Legolas and Viggo for the next 3 hours. It was a fine, fine film. I will not ever complain about Viggo eating crackers in my bed, no sirree.

When I got home, the rest of the house was alseep, and I forgot to start the bread for the morning. I guess I had too much Viggo on the brain.