Turkey again???

Santa Claus is coming to town

I debated dragging Thanksgiving out for the entire weekend, but after taking the kids to the Christmas parade and tree lighting downtown, I got into the spirit.

So, we got our tree and commenced the holiday decorating. What used to take me a day to accomplish BC (before kids) is clearly going to take me all week. At least we got the tree done.

I'll also be dragging this whole "you better watch out, you better not shout, you better not cry, I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming to town!" out all month.

Giving Thanks

We've hosted Thanksgiving since before we were married. Yes folks, my husband and I lived together before we were married. Oops, my kids will be reading this someday... I mean, my husband and I did not live together and were in fact both virgins when we got married. Yes, that's it. I almost forgot.

Every year, we've had a "Thanksgiving Disaster". Ok, that's an exaggeration. Most of them haven't really been disasters, except for the time that we caught the oven on fire and the fire department had to come and put it out. Of course, having a bunch of hot firemen in your house is never a disaster. Then there was the time that my sister forgot the turkey at her house, and had to turn around halfway through their two hour drive to my house to go back and get it. I think we broke the disposal in the sink by cramming potato peels down it on two different occasions. We had to buy a new stove and oven the year we let a pot overflow and drowned the electronic components. There was the year that we decided not to let our Mom cook anything anymore when she used beef broth for the gravy, forgot the sugar in the pecan pie and the stuffing was so dry the guys ended up making some "Stove Top" just so they'd have something to eat.

This year's official Thanksgiving Disaster was just as we were going to serve our amazing meal, we discovered there was no gravy. I thought my sister was bringing it, and she thought I was responsible for it. She's got some kind of email proving her innocence, but hey - how easy is that to come up with after the fact. (hee, hee. Just kidding Kir. It was my fault everyone!)

Anyway, this ended up being the best Thanksgiving Disaster ever! My sister-in-law and her new husband ran out to Safeway to get some gravy, but the kids were starving. We decided to go ahead and serve them while we waited. By the time they were back with the gravy, the kids were long done and off playing. All the adults then served up our meal and sat down to eat. To the most relaxing Thanksgiving meal since my sister and I have had kids! It was pure heaven. Why didn't we think of this before? We didn't have to get up once to fetch anything for anyone but ourselves.

Notice my sister in this picture in the background, bringing food to the kid's table during Thanksgiving dinner, part one.

The thing I am most thankful for this day of giving thanks is family. We were able to spend such a wonderful day with my sister's family, listening to all the cousins laugh and play. The best part was at the end of the night, after we'd bathed all the kids and they were in their jammies reading bedtime stories. I remembered that my Mom wanted a picture of her with all her Grand kids, who were at that point tired and in no mood for pictures, but you'd never guess that based on this great picture! That's because, she ran behind my couch and yelled "where's Mommy?", then popped up making googly faces at the kids. Apparently, my sister could have a career in kid's comedy, because they thought that was the most hilarious thing ever. Can you please come over every time I want to get a picture of my kids smiling?

Thanksgiving has also inspired me to think a lot about gratitude. I'm going to start a regular post topic about things I'm grateful for. I think it's good to remember those things. Now, I'm just trying to come up with a good title... Thankful Thursday? Ideas welcome.

That's right folks, I am married to the Sexiest Man Alive

Whenever I add a celebrity to my "list", you know the one. Famous people you have a hall pass to sleep with if the opportunity ever presented itself - which it never will, because they are celebrities and you are not, but it's fun to think about it anyway. So, anytime someone is on my "list", it spells certain death for said celebrity's career or for themselves. Case in point: Val Kilmer, Orlando Bloom, Matthew McConaughey, Ethan from Survivor, Heath Ledger - need I say more?

Not so with the latest addition to "the list", Hugh Jackman. He just won People magazine's prestigious Sexiest Man Alive award. Maybe it's because I haven't laminated my new list yet.

My husband bought me a copy of People with Hugh on the cover while we were visiting the in-laws, for me to peruse while watching the kids swim. I think he was just trying to distract me from reading blogs incessantly, but whatever. It worked. I showed my husband the above picture, which was featured in the People shoot, and commented "doesn't that look painful? fully clothed with ocean water splashing all over you? I bet it was freezing!".

My daughter Seesa, heard me and said "Lemme see!". I showed her the picture, and she shouted "THAT'S DADDY!".

My husband got a huge smile on his face, said something like "that's right honey" to her and, "did you know you were married to the sexiest man alive?" to me, and then said something about me laughing a little too much over the whole thing. Ok, maybe if your hair was longer, you didn't shave for a few days, you worked out a lot, and you liked to swim in the ocean fully clothed and then walk onto the beach looking like you were going to take me right there in the sand. Then, maybe.

Seesa sweetheart, I hope you always think your Daddy is the most handsome man alive.

Visiting Norwindia

I'm visiting my sister over at the Norwindians today with a guest post. Check it out...

Oh, and funny story about my guest post. My sister has been posting lately about "Sunday's Simple Pleasures", and that's what she asked me to write about. I wrote it on my Blackberry during my drive down to Santa Maria on Thursday night, then emailed it to her. Only thing is, I sent it to the wrong email address. My sister's email address is last name dot first name, and for some reason I accidentally emailed her using first name dot last name.

So, it will be Sunday's Simple Pleasures on a Tuesday. Oh well.

A little slice of heaven...and a slice of pie, or two!

We spent this weekend visiting my in-laws in Santa Maria (which if you know California, is south of San Luis Obispo and north of Santa Barbara). It's been a long time since we went down to Grammie and Grampy's house. We actually figured out that it's been about a year since our last visit. It's been a busy year... They live about five hours away, so we're normally able to visit every few months for a long weekend, and I feel pretty lucky about that.

Being down there reminded me of one of the reasons that I fell in love with my husband - his amazing family. Grammie and Grampy's house is a little slice of heaven for all of us. My husband grew up in this great neighborhood where a number of the families were really tight. The kids would go from house to house, and all the parents treated them like their own. I know this is true because every time we are there and we visit some of his family's friends - many of whom still live in the same houses, in that same neighborhood - they all treat us like family. My husband feels like he grew up with 23 brothers and sisters, and 6 sets of parents.

Here are the highlights of the weekend...

The garden.

Grammie and Grampy live in a beautiful home (that my husband grew up in), with an incredible yard. It's not palatial, but it's a good sized lot. Big enough that they actually had a sand volleyball court in the backyard when my husband was a kid. Now, it's a garden. Both Grandparents love to plant, so fresh fruit and veggies are plentiful. There is nothing better than going out into the yard, and picking an apple for lunch or some avocados to put in the dinner salad. Before I met my husband, I hated raw tomatoes. I grew up in "the city", so to me, they always tasted like cardboard. When I saw him eating one raw one time, I almost threw up. When he finally got me to try it, I was in tomato heaven. After that, I ate raw tomatoes like they were apples whenever I could get them home grown. In that second picture, my girls are picking sunflower seeds out of dried sunflowers. I think I'm going to try planting some in my yard next year.

The pie.

Grammie is an incredible cook. Really. Martha Stewart good. She made two pies this weekend. The one pictured is Olallieberry, and she also made an apple crisp - both from fruit they grew. The dinners we had both nights there were to die for. The kind where you keep eating past the point of being full just because it's so good. I regularly gain 5 pounds after a visit, and it's worth it!

The "pool".

They have a hot tub in their yard, which is like the perfect sized pool for my kids. They were in heaven. I barely got them out of the "pool" long enough to eat all weekend. The best part was that the weather was so warm (I heart California), that I even got a little sunbathing in while watching them swim. Seesa told Grampy that he needed to get a bigger pool, to which he mumbled something about the economy and before going back to his gardening.

The family time.

Good conversation around the dinner table. Great wine. Happy kids playing with all the fun toys they only see when they visit the Grandparents. Warm fire (again, California... you gotta love being in your swimsuit during the day and having enough of a chill in the air at night for a fire). Card and tile games after the kids have gone to bed. The laughter, the hugs, the kisses, the love.

Memories. Precious memories that I know we'll all cherish for a lifetime. After this horrible (ok, I said it) year, it was a timely reminder that this is what life is all about after all.

You're not the boss of me

A little while ago, my husband decided to tell our daughter Seesa, that we were in fact not the bosses of her. This was of course during some altercation where Seesa proclaimed, "you are not the boss of me!", and my husband told her that no, we aren't - in an attempt to teach her that she's the boss of herself, in the hopes that she would learn about taking responsibility for her own actions.

She's five. As probably goes without saying, I've been living with the wrath of this new found knowledge of hers ever since. And I'm running out of coming up with rational reasons that she should listen to me and do what I say, even though, I am not the boss of her.

I believe that as parents, we should try to give consistent messages to our children, so I tried to back him up on this one. However, the other day, I finally broke down. I told her that maybe Daddy isn't the boss of her, but I AM! I think I may have even said something about "as long as you live under this roof...". Oh well. Go big or go home.