My son

What a goofball

Bonus pictures

Here are some non-holiday related pictures from the last few days. Since I started reading other blogs, I have become aware of my poor photography. Glad I have cute subjects!

(photo by Laura)

(self-portrait)

aha!

yea! Delete the counter - delete the search tab!

Thanksgiving results

My tummy is happy. We had 2 wonderful Thanksgiving dinners! Last night, we joined the Minnesota side of my family for a get together. It was really nice to see everyone and the food was delicious! After she warmed up, I barely saw Laura. She spent lots of time upstairs with cousins Grace and Lloyd, having a ball, and she sat with them at dinner too. It was great to see them have so much fun together.

Cousin Barb and I realized that we were both wearing homemade socks (her pattern).

(photo by Cousin Sue)

And today, we had dinner at our house with Jim's parents. Everything turned out pretty tasty and I even had fun making it. Grandma C and Laura were both big helps, while Jim and Papa worked outside on something man-ish. And Adam just ran around playing with whoever was available and exploring his new toys.

Eggs for devil-ing

pie!

pie!

Which brings me to the confusion of today. We opened Adam's birthday presents this morning, had Thanksgiving dinner, and then put up the Christmas tree and turned on the outside Christmas lights. I'm so confused as to which holiday we are celebrating, but I enjoyed them all.

(photo by Grandma C)

I also want to say that Ree Drummond must have an incredible sweet tooth. The cinnamon rolls from her cookbook were certainly tasty, but much too sweet for me. Based on this, I cut the sugar in half when I made her yams (from her website) for dinner today, and they still gave me 3 cavities. But the pie crust was great and very forgiving when I used 1/2 whole wheat flour. I think I'll keep the recipes, but will cut the sugar at least in half, maybe more, on all future Pioneer Woman recipes. But I do love the way her cookbook has picture of every single step.

Thanksgiving plans

So here's my rough plan for food this Thanksgiving weekend.

Today, Laura and I made pie crust and cinnamon rolls. Both went into the freezer.

Papa and Grandma C won't get here until tomorrow (Thursday) evening, so tomorrow will be free for me to prep cook and watch the Macy's parade. I'll make the pumpkin pie, sausage stuffing (Grandma C's recipe - no pressure), and deviled eggs. We are invited for the Minnesota family Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin's house Thursday evening, so we get an early start on the yummy food!

Friday morning is cinnamon rolls for breakfast. I've never made them, but they are the Pioneer Woman's recipe and have plenty of butter and sugar in them. I'm not worried about their tastiness. I did go crazy and added raisins and toasted slivered almonds because I add nuts and raisins to everything, but I don't think they could mess it up too bad. I'll spend that morning with the turkey, and making mashed potatoes, gravy, yams, corn and bread. We have to have 2 kinds of bread in this family, neither are from scratch. Jim needs his 75 cent Brown and Serve rolls and I need my Pillsbury crescent rolls. I know scratch tastes better, but this is tradition. Everything else is very simple. Turkey, potatoes, and corn are basically just one ingredient dishes plus butter. I'm trying a new yams recipe, but it looks pretty straight forward too. Also adding some pomegranate seeds on the table because all of us women like them (Laura, Grandma and I) and because they are pretty and will be the only thing on the table lacking butter - literally. For dessert, pumpkin pie and the carmel apple crisp I've had in the freezer for a couple months. (gee, that sounds appetizing.) Also ice cream and whipped cream. I really wanted to make a pear crisp for some reason, but I think we'll have plenty of desserts on hand.

Sounds like a lot of food for only 4 adults, a kid and a baby. But we'll do our best and thoroughly enjoy the leftovers.

Jim and Laura made place cards (at my request). I might even put a tablecloth on the table, though I have opted to not use the china.

Happy First Birthday Adam!

We had a small, family celebration for Adam's birthday today. It was so nice. Laura was pretty much beside herself all day thinking about it. Since last week, she has been checking for the birthday banner (same one for everyone's birthday) first thing every morning (and once at 2am) and was ecstatic when she saw it this morning. She has sang him "Happy Birthday" no less than 15 times today and had a great time with the cake and presents. Oh...and he enjoyed his birthday too! He liked all his gifts and played with the cards as much as any of the presents. And he apparently didn't inherit Papa's aversion to chocolate, because he devoured his cake.

These are the best pictures, but here's a link to all of them.




A montage of Adam's first birthday. Sorry about the disgusting first note:

Here's a quick update on what he has learned lately:

Scoop food with a spoon (certain cleanup required)

Drink from glass by himself (see above)

Give Daddy "5"

Sign fish, fan, light, bird, airplane, all done

Initiates peekaboo with you whenever there is a blanket or towel or curtain nearby

Likes to tease me by walking toward the shoe rack while watching me and giggling

Likes bread, crackers, hummus, hamburger, pureed veggies, unsweetened applesauce, milk, baby puffs, cheerios, salmon, shrimp, winter squash, CAKE

Dislikes bananas, avocados, any veggies not pureed

Can walk down stairs while holding my hand

Can walk up and down our little step into the kitchen without holding on to anything

Has discovered the joy of arching his back and throwing a tantrum

Does a weird thing with his shoulders when he doesn't want to be picked up so you can't get a good grip

Claps when you say "Yea Adam!"

Happy Birthday Adam!

blog help

Help! I was messing around with the blog and added a counter successfully from Pax.com. Unfortunately, I added that stupid little search tab on the right hand side and can't get rid of it. I don't want it and it will annoy me forever if I can't delete it. I have tried to do it through the Pax site and through the HTML on this site, but it seems to be stuck. If anyone happens to know a lot about this stuff and can help, please let me know. Thanks

The Pioneer Woman!

Well, I did it! I finally met a celebrity. The entire time we lived in San Diego, I was on the lookout, but I never did recognize one. I guess my day finally came. I stood in line for an embarrassingly long time to meet Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman at the MOA. Maybe she's only a celebrity to blog readers, but it was exciting for me. She stayed 4 hours past her planned time to finish signing every book for every person in line. And she had real conversations and took pictures with every single person. I can't believe her smile could still be so pretty after 6 hours of constant smiling and chatting. She was sweet, made comments about us being neighbors when I told her where I grew up, and was just as nice as I imagined.

When I arrived, the line was incredibly long, but didn't seem to be growing any more. So I jumped in and out of line several times. Once to go up to the front to see her speak to the crowd, once to go to Radio Shack and buy a camera battery, and once to get in line to have her husband and sons sign the book too. I ended up only about 20 minutes behind where I would have if I had stayed in line the entire time. And I was lucky enough to be next to the nicest people. They really made the wait bearable and even fun.
I had stopped for a bunch of small chocolate chip cookies on the way back from Radio Shack and Ree's boys devoured them. They were really cute and sick of sitting there. The little one wasn't too interested and I couldn't get him to sign my book. But the older one signed it.

Marlboro Man (Ladd Drummond) and I

Being at the back of the line has its perks. Ladd and the boys hung out there towards the end waiting for Ree to finish and he chatted with us.

They were also filming a reality TV or movie called Mall Cops. So if you see it, be on the lookout for me!
And please congratulate Jim for being a Super Dad and watching both kids the entire time I was at the mall. He even took them to church and out to eat!

Turkey Turkey

I tried a new way of posting pics, but apparently, it didn't work. Here's the turkey:

Here's our T-Day centerpiece, courtesy of Jim and Laura. This was loosely inspired by your turkey project, Karen. But neither artist wanted to wait for me to gather directions and materials, so they used what they could find around the house.