Things I May Have Done in the Last Week or So

Celebrated Sophie's Book Two completion with a recital. The Bertolas, Youngbergs, Ash, and her dear teacher Kathy Langr joined us. I was so proud of her. Polishing for a recital is hard hard work.

Made quite possibly the worst dinner I have ever cooked (a terrible soup. Terrible. So so terrible.) We had to leave it out on the deck once we realized its terribleness. And no, there was no recipe that you need to avoid. I was trying to create my own little special recipe. David hates it when I do that. Now I know why.

Cooked two turkeys. One was cooked from its pristine frozen state. Did you know you could do that? Now you do. Here's the recipe. Remarkably, it wasn't too bad, either. The other turkey was brined a la Alton Brown. Oh oh my. Seriously. It was divine. And I substituted half the ingredients and only brined it for half the time...maybe it was only half as good as it might have been.

Had Thanksgiving here. I love my double ovens. I also love my family. Kurt, Ash, and Holden, Mike, Debi, Lyndsey and Marissa, Rachelle, Bill, Alysha, Mom and Sondra...great group. Great food. I love Thanksgiving. I love it! We were supposed to go to Spokane, but Mom's health made a last minute change necessary. We missed Paul and Cindee bunches, but I was glad to not have to make the drive with Crazy-Ben-Who-Hates-Traveling-in-the-Car.

Hit Black Friday sales with David. Meh. (That's Chad's word, but I had to steal it for shopping on Black Friday.)

Decided going out to dinner with the children is not a treat. We may not feed them outside of the house again until they have all graduated from high school. Or maybe college.

Kept Thanksgiving dishes unwashed on the counter until Saturday night. I know! Don't you feel better about yourself?

Lost two more toenails. Two more are threatening. I tell them they'd better not secede from the union because I need to keep more than half of my toenails. It's the principle of the thing.

Consoled Kate after David failed to pull out her first tooth. She was dreadfully, terribly sad. After appropriate snuggle time, I sent her downstairs to brush her teeth...et voila! The tooth fell out!!!! Screams of happiness. All was well. Sophie left a four page note under Kate's pillow scolding the tooth fairy for not giving Sophie her request months ago (she asked for one of the tooth fairy's dresses and a bag full of the tooth fairy's money. The tooth fairy said she'd see what she could do. That was the last we'd heard from the tooth fairy. Scoundrel.) The next morning there was money under both girls' pillows. Way to go, tooth fairy. You have redeemed yourself. Slightly.

Hit 900 miles...only 100 to go before January the first! (Well, only 95.6 after this morning's run.)

And the most amazing thing of all...

Finished and passed out all of my neighbor gifts. Last night. Amazing. I did cookies and an advent candle with scriptures to read each day from now until Dec. 24. Can't believe it. Most years I make neighbor gifts, pass out some of them, and forget the rest until they've gone bad. I will say, the cookies weren't great, and the scripture list was less than spectacularly formatted. I might be just a tad embarrassed about my non-elegant presentation. However, Malisa told me to look at the bright side. I've set the bar low and that will make other people feel good about themselves and THEIR lovely neighbor gifts. Score. I'm all about serving others in that kind of way.

And here are some more pictures of the day. I'm missed a few (a lot of) days. I just sometimes forget. No surprise there...