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

October brings the harvest....

Today was Maddy's school field trip to Twin Oaks Fun Farm. There were not a lot of pumpkins left but we still enjoyed a hay ride, the playground, and feeding the animals. Kate was particularly interested in the donkey. The donkey made a noise and then Kate proceeded to imitate it by going "hee haw hee haw." It was pretty funny considering that she was supposed to be quiet and listening to directions on how to feed the donkey.

Maybe that's why instead of feeding the donkey Kate decided to eat the donkey food.... She seemed content to eat it until I realized that's what she was eating. After a quick finger swipe to remove the feed from her mouth, Kate got mad and never really recovered. I think she was more upset that she had to share the feed with the animals than she was mad that I told her "no"...but I could be wrong.

Then there's Maddy. She had been waiting on this field trip for weeks. At school they learned a special song to sing on the hay ride and Maddy sang it every night to "practice." I'll have to get Maddy to sing it slowly so I can write down the lyrics but it ends with "October brings the harvest." And just that one line is has been stuck in my head all day now. :-) I wish my hands were free during the hay ride so I could have captured Maddy's little face. She was so excited. All in all it was a fun morning.

Go "Bluedogs"

Jessica and Holly

 My best friend from high school and freshman roommate at UGA, Holly, has been inviting us to games and tailgating since we moved back to Georgia but for one reason or another we didn't go. Well the stars finally aligned and we went to the October 1st game against Mississippi State.

The boys (aka the Husbands) left Macon at 5am to set up the tailgate. You have to be either crazy or dedicated to UGA football to get up that early on a Saturday. I am not either one of those things so Holly and I drove up later with her son Braxton and Maddy.

Everyone had a blast that day. In fact David had so much fun I may never see him again on football Saturdays. I think he's hooked on football and tailgating. :-) Maddy and Braxton played all day long and were so good. I thought for sure they would sleep on the way home but they didn't sleep a wink. In fact they spent most of the car ride giggling over an Oriental Trading catalog. Who knew a catalog could be so funny?

The funniest part of the day was Maddy calling the "Bulldogs" the "Bluedogs"... During the game she kept yelling "go Bluedogs." So she's going to have to fix that before we can take her to another game. Ha!

Maddy and Braxton with a "Bluedog"

Click on picture below for more football pictures.

Warrior Dash

Two weeks ago David and I went to visit our best buddies in Tennessee and to participate in the "Warrior Dash." I'll let you google "Warrior Dash" but it's basically a 3 mile trail run with 10 obstacles spread throughout the run. Most of the obstacles involve climbing ropes or crawling under barbed wire but the last two obstacles include jumping over fire and crawling in a huge mud pit. Sounds insane, right? And you might ask, "why would anyone pay to get dirty and tired?"

Well let me just say that it was so much fun. It was completely out of my comfort zone and something that no one would expect me to do or even attempt. I am not a runner, I am not an athlete by nature (or genetics), and I am not even that strong (although I am working on that). But none of that mattered on race day. What did matter is that I (we) took a risk and tried something new. And we were able to finish the race without injury and with our marriage still intact...

Pre-race, I had visions of me melting down halfway through and David getting upset at me. I did panic in the beginning but David remained calm and cheered me on. In fact I think completing the race together helped us. We saw sides of each other that we don't normally see and we worked together as a team. There was something about crawling through mud, crossing a finish line together, and someone handing us crazy medals that made me realize I can handle any situation as long as I have David by my side.... :-)

Now I don't plan on doing extreme sports all the time but David and I did agree that we should do something like this once a year. If for no other reason than it keeps us motivated to hit the gym. We've set our benchmark and our goal is to improve each year.

And as a side note, the picture at the top of the post is after the race. We didn't wear those hats and my legs are covered in mud as well as every article of clothing I wore that day. The hats were in our race packet along with a great t-shirt and the best bib number ever..... The last four numbers: "7680" is David's birth year (1976) and my birth year (1980) combined. See, it was a sign that were meant to run the race together. :-)

My race bib

Flashback Friday - Caramel Apple Edition

Pumpkin bread, football, colder weather, candy corn, and caramel apples are just a few of my favorite "Fall" things. Even though the temperature today in Macon was in the upper 80's the calendar still said it was the first day of Fall. I always feel funny about putting out fall decorations, wearing jeans, and eating fall foods before it officially "feels" like fall. But I am beginning to realize that here in Georgia if I waited on the "cooler" weather to put out my pumpkins and order pumpkin spice coffee K-cups I'd only have them for a few days and then it'd be time for our Christmas tree. So today I started forcing "Fall" in our house. 

First order of forcing Fall is caramel apple dip. It was Maddy's choice for our Friday night treat and the subject of "Flashback Friday". The picture below is of Maddy in September 2008. She is eating caramel dip with apples for the first time.

Flash forward 3 years......

And here is Kate, eating caramel apples for the first time tonight.

My kind of girl, no need for apples, just give her a spoon.

At this point, Kate is tired of listening to Zack bark.

Here try some, it's yummy!