Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving 2011

Everyone has a "Thanksgiving" story about how something goes terribly wrong leading up to dinner time. Whether it's a dog that ate the turkey before dinner or a Dad setting fire to the deck while frying the turkey, our own Thanksgiving is no exception. We now have our own "remember that Thanksgiving when...." story.

It all started the Monday before Thanksgiving. I went to the basement refrigerator at Dad's house and noticed a very odd rotten egg smell. The refrigerator contained only bottled water and a turkey so there was nothing that appeared to be rotten. So I closed the refrigerator door and went back upstairs. I casually mentioned to Allison "hey, I noticed a funny smell in the refrigerator downstairs. Do you think it could be the turkey going bad?" 

About that time Dad and David chime in and say "yeah, we smelled the same thing earlier, is it the turkey?" Allison tried to assure us that "no the turkey is fine, it's a pre brined turkey and you must be smelling the brining solution." None of us were convinced it was the "brining solution" so Allison called the store and spoke to someone that confirmed our fear "turkeys should not smell." So the next day Allison exchanged the turkey and brought home a different turkey.

Well the story doesn't end here. Flash forward to Thanksgiving morning. Everyone is enjoying the parade on TV, there's a nice fire going in the fireplace, and the house is filled with the smell of Thanksgiving. It's a perfect morning until about two hours into Turkey roasting time when Dad frantically, yells asks, "who turned off the oven?" Everyone in the house denies touching the oven. Dad starts the oven again and announces that dinner will be a few minutes late. But the story doesn't end here either....

Another hour goes by, Dad checks the turkey and decides it's time to turn the oven down. After some more "frantic discussion" it is realized that the oven has turned off again and won't come back on. Yikes! Allison calls "the Thanksgiving emergency" hot line while David "Googles" oven repair techniques. Thanksgiving dinner was not looking good at this point. The turkey was almost done but all of the casseroles still needed to be baked.

In the back of my mind I was thinking we might have to order Chinese food for dinner and Allison will never ever cook Thanksgiving dinner again. But thanks to the kindness of a neighbor with a working oven our turkey finished roasting and our casseroles baked. Thanksgiving dinner was saved and served only two hours late!

The next morning Dad tried to start the oven just to see if it would work and you won't believe me....but the oven came on with no problem and successfully warmed up leftovers for lunch!  Go figure....

We returned home to Macon late Friday night from a wonderful week long Thanksgiving break. I've got hundreds of pictures from our adventures during the week, including Maddy's first time ice skating but they'll be posted later in the week. Right now I've got a backlog of pictures to process for Bury Cute Photography but I couldn't resist sharing our turkey story and a few of my favorite pictures from our trip.

On the "Mall" with Maddy. It was a rainy, foggy day.

David and Maddy on the "Mall" with the Capitol and carousel in the background.

Kate was asleep in her stroller for the first two pictures but she woke up in time to ride the carousel.



Today's snack is brought to you by the letter "V"

It was our turn to provide snack for Maddy's class this week. Because I am the "crazy" mom who likes to come up with a snack that starts with "letter of the week", I decided that we would make chocolate covered "V's." Chocolate cover "V's" sounded better to Maddy than bringing "vegetables."

So we took 2 mini pretzel sticks glued together with chocolate frosting and then dipped them in melted chocolate. Maddy said "they were delicious and everyone enjoyed their snack....except for one kid that didn't like chocolate and he threw it in the trash can, isn't that crazy?"

Our pretzel V's

Kate, our taste tester. Notice how she is starting to pose
for my camera. Wonder where she learned how
to do that?

A not so good picture of our final product.

Trick or Treat

Kate telling Maddy "no, mine!"
Translation: that's my candy and you better leave me alone. 

Halloween is finally over! Between a costume photo session, preschool party, Trick my Trunk at church, and then trick or treating on Monday night we've been "doing" Halloween for almost a week now. I am exhausted and really tired of candy but it was worth it because the girls had so much fun. Especially trick or treating last night.

Kate trotted around the neighborhood holding her candy filled pumpkin and she would not let go of that pumpkin. At barely 22 months old she knew it was candy and that she better protect it from Daddy and Big Sister...

And in case you didn't know, both girls dressed up as cowgirls. Below is my new favorite picture.

                            

Some of you might be thinking "look at how sweet they are and look at Kate holding Maddy's hand" but trust me, two seconds earlier the picture looked like this....

Kate really did not like Maddy being on the horse with her. In fact it took two excellent photography assistants to help put a smile on Kate's face....

Check out the web album below for pictures from all of our Halloween events....

Halloween_2011