We Gave Thanks (a day early)

At Micron, machines run round the clock--holiday or no holiday!!!  Today is Thanksgiving, and one of Chanon's regularly scheduled working days so we celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday instead.  Today we have left-overs.  YUM!

Micron does feed their "work-on-Thanksgiving-Day-employees" a turkey meal, but it's just not like home cookin'.  Also, hanging out with your co-workers is just NOT the same as being home with family!

This year I had help making dinner.  Emily chose to learn how to make Thanksgiving dinner for one of her Personal Progress projects.  Here she is taking notes while I explain "the process".

 Here's Emily opening a can of pumpkin.  We made rolls and pumpkin pie the night before the feast.

 Spooning pie filling into pie shells:

 The big day!  We cleaned up the kitchen and pulled out all the food we needed:

 Here's our turkey in the roaster.  If you do NOT have one of these, may I strongly suggest that you GET ONE!!!!!  They are fabulous!!!!!  (Might I add that using one means you won't have to clean turkey juice drippings out of your oven!!!).  We had a small turkey this year (14 pounds....which was plenty big for us) and the roaster cooked it in only 3 hours approximately!  Using a roaster made the whole process so much easier.

 We moved over the summer, and I never checked my china to see if it survived (I was afraid to).  After inspecting it a couple of days ago for Thanksgiving dinner use, I found that the only casualty was one dessert plate.  Not too shabby considering I have service for 12 and everything else was in perfect order!!!!!

 In addition to learning about planning for and making Thanksgiving dinner, Emily learned how to set the table properly.  Here she is putting on the table cloth:

 (You can tell where Nathan and Sarah sat because they did NOT get china plates!!!)  The only thing I could NOT remember was the proper place for the napkins....under the forks, or under the knife/spoon?  We went with the knife/spoon.  Were we correct, mom?

 Here's Emily making the gravy.  Pretty much everything else was ready at this point.  Making the gravy is pretty much the worst, most tedious job EVER!!!

 Ready to serve!

 Here's a close up of one of the bottles....just so there's no question about what we were drinking! he he

 Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

 Bon Apetit!!!!

 Nathan ate a little bit and then headed for the computer.

HAPPY TURKEY DAY (gobble, gobble)!!!!

(Nathan....6 yrs old/1st grade)

The only constant in life is CHANGE

It's been snowing!  Our first "real" snow here.  Is is sticking?  A tiny bit, but not too much so far (that's Ok....I like it that way, and it's enough to bring on that "holiday feel".  Ahhhhh.....I can almost smell the Turkey and pumpkin pie now,  and then Christmas...........lights, trees, presents, goodies...........!!!!!).

ANYWAY, here's some pictures:    

Also, another GREAT change is that Daylight Savings time went away earlier this month (Yay!!!!!!.....I'll enjoy "real time" while it lasts) and now the kids don't have to go to school in the dark.

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     Last night Emily and I went to a friend's house and made hair flowers.  It's been a while since I've made any and it was kind of fun!  I'm too old for hair flowers (I would feel silly wearing one) so I will use mine on a scarf.  Recently, I learned how to make 3 different types of T-shirt scarves (thanks to Pinterest!).  

I'm just learning so many crafty, frugal things here!  I made plum jam with a friend (it was DELICIOUS!!!!), and liquid laundry soap with another friend, and I've got 2500 or so idea pins on Pinterest  just waiting for me to try them out (food recipes, crafts, recipes for homemade cleaners, all kinds of things).

I've also been busy playing the piano for various groups/events:  

1) I'm in the YW's organization at Church and one of my jobs is pianist, so I play every Sunday and whenever the girls do a musical number for something.  There was a convert baptism last Saturday that I played for (a Laurel aged girl).  

2) I think I mentioned before that since moving here I've joined a music group....I am the accompanist for three singers.  Anyway, we've all been really busy so we've only been able to "perform" once, and that was in a Sacrament Meeting last Sunday.  Our goal is to start doing firesides, and even do some professional recording. 

3)  I've also been recruited to play a couple of the songs for the Ward choir's Christmas presentation, 

~AND~ 

4)  I'm playing for another choir who does a volunteer Christmas Program for inmates at four low to medium security Prisons here in the area.  Hopefully my fingers will hold out!

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OK, enough about me.  Look at how this kid has grown!

I bought this outfit for him last December at Disneyland and the pants were NOT high-waters at the time!!!!  This was the smallest shirt I could find (that wasn't baby-size) and it was huge on him.  For the past several weeks especially, he's been constantly hungry and has made complaints about hurting legs.  

Obviously it was growing pains!!!!

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November 11th was a very special, but sad day.  Yes, it was the day that Harry Potter 7~2 was released on Blu-ray, DVD, 3D...........anyway------it was exciting to buy it and own it, but it was also very sad knowing that this was the last big Harry Potter release of any kind to look forward to.  We decided to have a small family movie viewing party so we bought a big sub-sandwich and some treats.  Watching just part 2 alone would've felt WRONG, so we watched 7-1 first, and then 7-2 immediately after.

 Nathan and Sarah crashed out real fast!!!!

I know it's so silly, but I've almost felt like I've been in a slight state of mourning ever since this night.  

We LOVE the Harry Potter story (movies and books) and it feels terrible that it's over.  I even get teary thinking about it (how old am I?).  Especially when I look at this picture (GEEZ!!!!!!!):  

THANK YOU for all these magical years (*sob, sniff*)

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Speaking of Harry Potter, his look-alike, Dean, turned 17 on November 5th!!!!!  Crazy, I know.  Now he's officially "of age" (in the Wizarding world anyway).  No more trace!  

If you don't know what I'm talking about, you best read Harry Potter!!!!

The Birthday boy (we celebrated a day early, btw):

Only one candle as per Dean's request....we didn't want the Boston Cream Pie riddled with holes!!!! 

 Opening presents:

 (Yes, he writes down what presents he gets.  He is definitely my son....I used to do the same thing)

 I think that Nathan was even more excited for Dean's birthday than Dean was.........

 (Ha, look!  Nathan still has Lasagna sauce on his arm!)

 .......especially when Dean unwrapped "Cars 2 on blu-ray"!!!!!

 After presents, we put in the Cars 2 blu-ray and watched it.

First was the Toy Story Toon "Hawaiian Vacation" (at least, I THINK that's what it's called).......

 ........and THEN the actual movie.

Happy Birthday, Dean!!!!!!!

Trick or Treat!

(What an original title, I know!)

Welcome, foolish mortals! It was a scary, haunted night in our neighborhood!  Happy haunts materialized, pumpkins screamed in the dead of night, people died of fright!

  Here we have Rapunzel, Looney Luna Lovegood (complete with official Luna wand), Buzz Lightyear (sans wings), and Princess Sarah (which is kind of redundant to say, since "Sarah" means "Princess"!).

And here is the official candy passer-outer (don't worry, he didn't "faint", he just gave candy to little kids):

Dean was also the home protector since Dad wasn't home from work yet.  Here you can see that he just turned "Jason" away.  Whew, that was close.  Great job, Dean!

Starting out on the path to candy, candy, CANDY!!!!  

The first door.....

We came upon this cute little scene....ghosts doing the happy dance 'round a tree.  Isn't that special?

We went trick or treating with Dracula and a stray cat~

We even had a run-in with the WW1 flying Ace!!!!

Some Grim-Grinning Ghosts came out to socialize, and Cap'n Hook also sailed in for the occasion:

Life's no fun without a good scare!!!!!  Scream like a banshee, jump right out of your skin!!!

Glowing girls:

Creepy moon (of course, my camera never captures the full effect...just glad the moon wasn't "full".  That really would've been creepy).  

All done!

After candy fun, we went inside where it was safe and warm, and watched "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken".  This is one of the best Halloween-ish movies ever!  If it wasn't a school night we probably would've tried to squeeze in "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown", Garfield's Halloween Adventure and "Arsenic and Old Lace", too.

We also ate yummy stuff (Dean DID get off the computer and watched the movie with us).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!!!!!!