Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, we celebrated it with my cousin Danielle, and my second cousin, Bassie in PA.  The feast was delicious and the visit was enjoyable; we may or may not have had three pies for dessert (no we did not eat them all in one sitting, thank you very much!) among the 3 of us.

 Mostly the doings of Danielle

Nice Bird!

Bassie.  (Sorry I didn't get a better pic of you!)

Besides the turkey feast, we also went to Hershey's Chocolate World (one of the 'sweet' (har har) perks of Danielle working for Hershey's!).  For the tour portion of the experience, think Disneyland ride, kinda like "It's a small world" but MUCH better and more interesting.

View of Hershey Park from the "Kiss Tower"

Mmm chocolate syrup!

Danielle also let us join her in chopping down a tree!  Turns out we are kind of bad at it, luckily the tree guys fixed the gnarly base. 

Working hard, or hardly working?

Danielle may also be the best hostess, because not only did she let us feed her dog way too many "Beggin' Strips," but she also gave the best Welcome gift.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great. This year we had a 'real' turkey {don't ask} and were able to enjoy it with family.

My parents and sister came down to Phoenix, and it was perfect weather while they were here. We were incredibly blessed to have most of the days off from work while they were here. Sadly, I did come down with a nasty head cold, but that didn't stop me from enjoying my family.

Unfortunately we didn't take very many pictures, but here is just one from the feast. My mom insisted that Wolfgang be the first to cut into the turkey. So he did.

What is that, a beach towel as a table cloth/large pot holder on the table, you say? Why yes, yes it is. Gotta make do with whatcha got, right?

My mom and I did all the cooking, while my dad watched sports games at their hotel room (we don't have a tv), and Wolfgang and Jessie hiked Camelback. I'm glad I had cooking as an excuse, because climbing that beast was definitely a one time thing for me.

The holiday festivities consisted of eating {obviously}, weighing ourselves periodically on Thanksgiving day {it has become my tradition}, napping, movie-watching {The Descendents was really good. Complete with great acting and beautiful scenery- Hawaii of course}, a lot of board game playing, sister date of hair cut and dyeing, meeting sister's boyfriend for the first time, and more.

It was a great time had by all.

Costco

Yesterday I was getting my Thanksgiving shopping on. I don't want to be doing the last minute shopping thing and have to deal with a bunch of crazies, so I've bought what I can, early. One of those items included:



In case you can't tell what that is, it's a 20 lb turkey in our small freezer! This is the first time I've ever bought a real turkey; I'm pretty proud of myself. Although I can't say I'll be preparing it on my own, my mom will be here to help me! {Sorry for all the "!!" 's, can you tell I'm really excited for next week?}

Something else I got at Costco yesterday that I'm excited about, are these:



3 Big ol' tubs of HUMMUS! You know I love hummus. When I got to the register with just one, the cashier told me, "you know, you can get 3 of those for that price." So he made the little grocery packer guy go get me 2 more {sorry guy!}. I was pretty excited. All three for only $12. Two are the, "roasted sweet bell pepper" and the other is "avocado and cilantro." I just tried the bell pepper one a little while ago and it's delightful. I ended up giving one to my friend last night, because I knew we didn't need/wouldn't be able to eat all of them.

Right now, I've got a copycat recipe of Cafe Rio's (our favorite Mexican place) sweet pork simmering in the crock pot. This is our 2nd time making it, I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm sorry that a lot of my posts have just been about FOOD lately, but I don't promise that they'll get any better. But let's be real, would you rather me writing about work, or food?

That's what I thought.

First half of turkey weekend

So Far:

-neither one of us has had to work
-realized we've technically have had 3 turkey dinners in a 24 hour period...that's embarrassing AND disgusting; but we are more than happy and blessed to have enough food.
-have been able to sleep in, one of those days
-had a lovely morning in the newly re-opened temple (although the A/C was broken)
-got quite a bit of Christmas shopping over with (bitter-sweet)
-gotten homework done (and a loooong way to go...)
-nice naps
-have thrown our crap together for our first (of many, I'm sure) yard sale tomorrow.

I hope you all have been enjoying your Thanksgiving Holiday weekend as well.