So this was long enough ago (it's currently summer 2010) that I barely remember Christmas. I also barely remember having a camera that works so poorly in indoor light that most of these pictures are a little (or very) blurry! Thankfully the pictures improve vastly once we hit spring.

So above we have Murphy modeling his gift from me, a snowflake collar. Below we have Murphy supervising Russ while we decorated the tree. Murphy always has to have his nose in everything:

The three of us spent hours on the tree, though I'm not complaining as this is one of my favourite holiday activities. The tree turned out lovely:

Both Russ and I worked Christmas eve night shift, so we went straight from work to my parents' house for Christmas morning. Here Murphy's a little blurry also due to the speed at which he waggles while unwrapping:

And here's another look at the collar I gave him, as you might be able to tell this picture was taken at my place, not my parents. The collar was so cute that I had to give it to him early to wear throughout the Christmas season:

After unwrapping his own gifts Murphy had to help out with everyone else's gifts. Below he's keeping a watchful eye on Russ:

And once the gifts were all opened we headed into the kitchen for breakfast. Murphy was a little pooped from the early morning excitement, so he rested under Russ:

Russ headed over to his aunt's for Christmas dinner with his family, while Murphy and I celebrated with my parents, aunts and cousins. Below is Murphy making sure the cooking is going smoothly:

Then, my Auntie Louise and cousins Aaron and Kyle arrived for gifts, appetizers and a chat. I had a cute picture of Aaron fending Murphy off from the chip dip, but it was even blurrier than the one below!

We had a lovely dinner, though Murphy and I had to leave pretty quickly after the meal so I could go sleep.

I always leave my tree up til after New Years - it takes so long to put up that I hate to take it down. And Murphy loves to sleep on the tree skirt. I was trying to take some cute pictures of him under there when he decided he needed a scratch:

I love that picture as it really catches the motion of the scratch. And no surprise he becomes a little itchy while under there, the area is covered in tree needles:

It didn't matter how often I vacuumed, there were pine needles everywhere! And while I don't think the tree made Murphy any itchier than normal, he was still scratching his face on the furniture:

So that's it for Christmas. Frankly, it barely felt like Christmas, or winter, as we got absolutely no snow! You might remember how the previous Christmas we were practically snowed in with about 2 feet of snow. Well 2009 was the polar, no pun intended, opposite. So disappointing!

So to finish off, here are a few random pictures from the end of 2009. First is Murphy's new favourite place to sleep at night - the pile of extra pillows from my bed. He has a $100 dog bed at the other end of my very small bedroom, but he prefers the human bedding.

And he's still making his nests out of anything he can dig into a ball. The perfect roll in the blanket, below, looks like a human must have made it, but it was entirely Murphy's doing:

Murphy definitely snoozes more now that he's approaching 10. I love his little paw in this shot:

So that was December, and a little of January. This update wasn't too exciting, but just wait for February 2010 and the Olympics! That's up next.

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: February 2010
Here's the link to the previous update: October 2009

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