Thanksgiving Day Blessings

I can't remember ever having a Thanksgiving dinner outside in 80 degree weather! (That's Mesa for you!) The butter was melted into puddles by the time we finished eating...which incidentally only took about 30 minutes. It has always been amazing to me how quickly and thoroughly a crowd can ravage a table full of food, especially then that food has taken hours and hours to prepare! Although I shouldn't be surprised this time because...um, yum. That's all I have to say about our pit roasted turkey, my cousin Matt's prailine sweet potatoes, and my aunt Jeri's famous rolls and homemade jam. As always my stomach got full before my taste buds were done and I didn't really need to eat anything again until the next day. Except for my cousin McKenna's german chocolate pie and Jeri's pecan pie. There's always room for pie!!
So I really have to tell you more about this whole pit roasting thing. My uncle Casey makes the turkey part of Turkey day a neighborhood and ward affair. He rents a backhoe and digs out a long skinny portion of his one acre backyard. Then he fills the pit with whole tree stumps and limbs and branches. Under all of those logs was a pipe that was punctured with a million tiny holes and had two leaf blowers attached to the end. When the time was right he doused all the logs with accelerant and then another guy threw flares in to start the fire. Then when the fire was mostly started they turned on the leaf blowers to really get it going. We had a bonfire! All the neighbors came with their tinfoil wrapped turkeys and each turkey got its own metal tag so they could find it later. There were over a hundred turkeys! Someone brought hot chocolate and donuts and everyone just hung out and talked for a while. Then sometime later when the fire had died down all the turkeys were placed in the pit and roasted until mid-morning on Thanksgiving. I don't think any turkey is every really going to top that one! Cool, huh.
Now I am home, Rus on a work trip, kids a little crazy...they used up their "good kid reserve" on the drive home yesterday...and my home is a semi-wrecked mixture of fall/Christmas decorations. I can't help but wish it were still Thanksgiving day and I was still surrounded by so much fun family...
...like my cousins, many of them boys in their teens/early twenties, playing HORSE and beating the losers with a massive cardboard tube. (Hilarious.)
...Or that I was still in the car with Courtney, McKenna, Emma and my aunt Kim and my my mom headed out to see New Moon. (Not too shabby...loved Edward in the book, but loved Jacob in the movie - us girls are conditioned to love all things tan and muscular and Edward doesn't quite meet up.) My cousins were great to see the movie with; we all cracked up about the corny parts and cheered at the good parts.
...Or I wish I was sitting around the kitchen table with my sisters and mom and Jeanne and Courtney and my Grandma, making a paper "Believe" craft but looking like we were all dealing a deck of super chic cards. Jeanne got hers all glued together and then recruited me to embellish it for her. And then I did my grandma's. And then Amy copied me and Jeanne copied her and it felt like old times with my friends Taffy and Tara - they're always making me finish their crafts, too. :)
...Or I'd love to be in the crazy madness of Black Friday. What can I say, I love people, even crazy, flustered, obsessed spendy people who push and shove and buy all the good deals before you even show up at the store because you're not a crazy 12am-er. Amy, Tyler, my mom, and I all went to ToysRus and Walmart at 10am and we did just fine, thankyouverymuch.
What made it all work were the wonderful quiet moments at Rus's cousin's house where we stayed. His cousin James (and wife Silvia and three kids) was wonderful enough to leave town and loan us his house, complete with two twin beds in one room and another room with a crib and an amazingly comfy queen bed for us. And a gallon of milk which made breakfast easy. And a ton of toys that my kids loved. It was blissfully wonderful to be able to retreat there at night, put the kids in bed, and hang out with Tom, another cousin of Rus's. (So nice to see you, Tom.)
And to round out the whole family-seeing-adventure, we were able to go to Rus's cousin Jennifer's house to have dinner with her family and Mary and Clay, and to see beautiful Melissa who just got back from her mission and is gearing up for her next adventure, whatever that may be...
Okay and to really round things out we ate at Nielsen's right before we left. The Finer Things Grinder will always have a special place in my heart. And stomach. Mmm.
All in all it was the perfect Thanksgiving. The kind that just shoves all of your blessings in front of you so that you are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it all.
See. Here are some of my blessings. (Superheroes aren't just for Halloween anymore.)

A Turkey for Turkey Day

It's that time of year where everything seems to speed up. Days are shorter, weeks fly by, and holidays attack at lightning speed. I love it all, it just makes me tired sometimes. :) And crazy busy. And crazy, crazy. There are just so many cute things out there to make! I decided to try Bakerella's cake pops finally. I thought the Turkey ones were adorable and that my kids would love them. Here are the three most famous of the batch:

Grandpa, Stud, and Sly.

Gobble Gobble!I should back up a little and tell you how wonderfully grateful I am for my children!
They are three amazing little individuals...
I drop Bekah off at school everyday and she has this little walk that just kills me! Full of purpose and confidence, hair swishing and her purple backpack making her look like a little uniformed turtle.
And Jacob is a wonderfully conflicted three-almost-four year old. A big boy sometimes, unable to be upstairs by himself at other times. He helped me make these turkeys and he did an awesome job. I see a budding chef/baker in him everytime he helps me cook. And he always wants to help me! He wants to see the pancakes as they are mixed, then he moves his chair to see them cooked...he sits on the counter by the stove (a safe distance away) and wants to stir things and sprinkle the salt and pepper (I don't let him.)
He is always right there when I'm making cookies (I know it's because of the cookie dough!), and Turkey making time was not different!

Bekah and Jacob were really good at crumbling my baked cake..."We've never done this before!" they said...And then while Bekah wandered off and did something else, Jacob stuck by and helped me shape each ball. I think his look like terds. Totally cracks me up. :)I can't forget to mention Beau! He was a helper, too. Not exactly the kind of helper I wanted, but I guess he tried. Beau is also at a conflicted age. A clingy, happy-then-sad-in-an-instant age. He loves to run in the kitchen and roar at me to scare me. Then he'll wave his arm and smile when I say "Bye"...then he'll run away and come back and do it all over again. He loves reading books with me, playing trucks, riding the rocking horse, eating treats, walking by himself, and he love-loves it when daddy gets home from work. He always beams at him and chatters away very excitedly. It's his job to put Rus's work badge away and he knows it!
I hope you all have a wonderful, simple, gratitude-filled Thanksgiving Day. I know I can't wait to spend time with my family! I am most grateful for them simply because they love and accept me and my kids and even Rus. :)

Sportin' a Shortened New Do!

BuhBye not even long locks...on to newer greener shorter pastures!

A Doozy.

Last week was a doozy. This is why:
Rus left town for three days, a work trip to Baltimore.

My mom was in town with her friend Deena, but then Mom caught the flu and they left early for home.

I went outside to cook steak for dinner Tuesday night, (while Rus was gone), and found that my bunny Polly had indeed been pregnant. She had, in fact had babies. Her lover had then killed them because evidently the male can't be in the cage with the babies. My steak didn't look so good after I cleaned up after that. Neither did Rus.

Wednesday was a school holiday. Bekah was out of school and was determined to have a schedule, just like school. So we planned out the day, complete with a hike and folding laundry/putting it away. Laundry proved to be traumatic, Bekah folded her clothes in the rocking chair and then was trapped by them and couldn't get out. I didn't help her and she cried as though she'd been maliciously abandoned. Jacob pulled Bekah's hair, and then when I gathered all my clothes in both arms, Beau decided to hang on my legs, so I had to shake him off (my arms were full of nicely folded clothes, remember!), which he didn't like at all...I ran upstairs with the clothes, put them away, heard Beau's cries escalate, ran downstairs to find that Jacob was sitting on Beau. Lovely. Many tears ensued...mine and theirs. I laid Beau down for a nap, loaded the van with hiking essentials, realized Beau was not napping like he was supposed to, loaded everyone up and ordered them to not speak until the van stopped moving. We had a great hike.
See?Oh. I mean see?Rus got home from his work trip to a partially abused/neglected wife/mother. Dinner was a fight because my kids really don't like baked potatoes. The broken car in our garage had to be fixed because it had to be moved out of the garage that night because Rus was having the boy scouts over to finish making their skateboards. Fun again.

On Thursday I delightedly sent Bekah to school and Jacob to preschool and Beau and I played at Home Depot. Rus came home that night exhausted...I took the kids to bedtime stories at the school while Rus stayed with Beau. Somewhere in all that Rus decided that I was crazy. He told me I needed a break. He had Friday off and decided to give it to me while he took the kids. I would have felt better about the much needed break if it didn't mean Rus thought I was crazy. Turns out I got a half day...Rus came home at one thirty, gave me the boys, told me he needed a nap, went in his room, closed the door, and that was that. I explained that the difference between him and me is that when I need a nap and the boys aren't sleeping, I have to stay up with them, which apparently happens to equal crazy!

Saturday was fun...I went to a BYU game with Rus and a bunch of friends from church...we had an amazing breakfast beforehand...the game was closer than my BYU fan friends thought it would be...my favorite part, seriously, was when the UNM kicker hit the field goal post THREE times during the game. Wow. History in the making. My friend Taffy yelled at me part way through the game for sitting through the BYU fight song. She said that anyone she fed breakfast had to stand. I was a BYU mega fan after that, didn't want her to think me ungrateful. :) All of us got together again that night to congratulate Tara's husband Kevin on making it over the hill. Food, food, glorious food. And a fun decades trivia game. Anyone need a recipe for a cream cheese/chocolate chip cheeseball? It was divine. Or maybe Devilish. Take your pick.

And now it's Sunday. Day of rest. A day to go to Church, get straightened out, renew my determination, strengthen my resolve, fall in love with my kids again, wink at my husband, take a nap.

Speaking of...

Zoo Visit and San Lorenzo Canyon

Bekah had a short day at school last week and we wound up at the Zoo. Jacob and Bekah both had been dying to go and we were lucky to make it there on such a wonderfully, unseasonably warm Wednesday, where the first thing the kids wanted to see was "those stinky birds." Flamingos. Then it was the gorillas and monkeys, who were exceptionally fun to watch, it must have been play time, (Look! the missing member of our family!)We also actually saw the hippos...usually they are way too busy swimming...and we saw the polar bears get fed, where the glass is scratched and cloudy and the best views are from sitting up on the rock work, right next to the sign that says "Parents, do not allow your children to climb on the rock work." Whoops. Then it was the cats, elephants, and finally seals, where we knew it was time to go because of excessive grumpiness and laying down on the old gum-pocked sidewalk. I thought Beau would love all the animals, but I forgot that the fences aren't really set for his height, which really frustrated him. He loved the ducks, but enjoyed feeding himself their food rather than throw it.
Can I just insert in here that Rus is now labeling our home "The Petry Dish" because we can't all seem to be healthy at once. We've done the flu and strep throat, and we've had boogers, boogers, so many boogers, and I want someone to come fumigate my home, but with some sort of anti-germ vapor that instantly rids it of all its horrible contagious bugs. In trying to find the bright side of all this I'm reminded of what my sister said, that we'll just have it all out of the way before Thanksgiving comes so we can go visit them.
Anyways, another fun thing we did yesterday was ditch the ol' Petry Dish and head down to San Lorenzo Canyon, just north of Socorro. We took along our friends Scott and Lisa and their kids Austin and Allie and we all had a great time. Here are some pics from that...

Look we found fall!

Can you see Rus's head down there at the bottom? We got to hike through a hidden slot canyon.The entrance...it looks like a dead end, but there is actually a trail winding back through the canyon for at least a mile. It was really fun to go with friends and show them around one of the beautiful places that we love.

Bekah Fairy

So I saw the adorable tinkerbell costume idea/tutorial on Ashley's Make It and Love It blog and decided that Bekah should be a fairy for Halloween. Thankfully she went along with it, fabric was cheap, and the flu slowed our pace down a notch so I had time to make it...I call her my hobo fairy because of the wonderful homemade nature of it all.My favorite part was actually painting her face...I've realized I could set up a little booth painting faces for hours and I would be in hog heaven. Bring me your face. I'll turn it into a work of art. Sort of.
And here's a fun pic of Jacob...(that black dot on his face is one of Bekah's sticker earrings)This kid knows how to entertain himself. Give him a couple of cars and he will drive them and give them names and play house with them and kill them and they'll come back to life and have babies and...oh wait, that's actually his imaginary baby lions I'm talking about...So it shouldn't surprise anyone at all that he knows how to make his fingers into airplanes (two different types, really...this version is just more fun to share than the other one). Gotta love my Jakey.
And now I'm off to turn this blog into a book. On Blurb.com. It slurps your whole blog into a book, and then you can go through and edit the format, if you'd like. I have two years worth, which with my addiction amounts to almost 200 pages. I can't wait to have it done, hardbound and all...I think it will be an awesome family history, at least through my eyes, with my slant on things.
Gotta go...BEau is trying to take over the world, one keyboard at a time..AHHHH!