Hello dear friends! I hope you all had a great Christmas! Mine was pretty normal except for the escaped guinea pig and drunken soon to be ex brother-in-law.

My niece decided that she wanted to open Christmas presents Christmas eve. Not a problem except her daddy (The one arrested for questioning regarding some missing rifles. Which just happened to magically reappear the day after he posted bail...) had spent the afternoon in the local casino swilling the free beer while he gambled. Anyway, after texting and calling him for over an hour he staggers over to "watch" his daughter open presents. By "watch" I mean texting his girlfriend and bragging about how the casino runners kept giving him free beer because he was such a "stud". He stayed about twenty minutes before heading back to the casino. Didn't say goodbye, didn't give his daughter a kiss, just got up and left. My niece had a meltdown! Took an hour to get her calmed down enough so she could open the rest of her presents. I am delighted to say that she loved all her toys, games, and clothes. And once I managed to get the hungry hippo game assembled she beat me, her mother, and grandmother every round.

As for the guinea pig... He either worked out how to open his cage or the reindeer let him out. But, I woke up with the little rodent crawling up my pajama leg headed for forbidden territory! Of course your first instinct, after screaming like a little girl, is to swat at what's crawling up your leg with sharp little claws... I missed, hit something fairly sensitive, screamed again, and fell out of bed! Not exactly the way I wanted to get up on Christmas morning but, once the excitement was over it was more than worth it to see the look on my nieces face as she opened her Santa presents. A fureal kitty and a mlp Equestra girls rainbow dash doll.