Thanksgiving Week

Some major backdating going on, but oh well.  We had a busy week during Thanksgiving.  Samantha’s favorite tv show right now is Dinosaur Train on pbs so when I found out that Toddler Tuesday down at the Mall of America was going to have Buddy (a T-rex and the main character) visiting I thought it’d be fun for Sammi to go down.  She’s nearly a year older than when we went to Sesame Street so maybe she wouldn’t be scared of a character she loved. 
She was very excited in line telling me “I’m a T-REX!  RAWR!!!”  and “I have two fingers!”

 

Clara was a trooper as well and sat contently in the stroller.  When Buddy came out, Samantha was ecstatic and kept pointing him out to me and ducking under the ropes that formed the line.  He even gave me a little pose while I snapped a picture in between kids going up.

However, once it was our turn Samantha wouldn’t touch him.  She wouldn’t touch his hand or even stand next to him.  I thought I would be able to snap a picture, instead I handed my camera to the staff member.  I guess at least I made it into a picture.
 
We ended up doing Thanksgiving on our own this year.  So I got to use my china for the 3rd time, I believe.  And I still love it.

Since we were on our own, we made the best of it.  We invited over a bunch of friends but most of them already had plans so we just had the Hahns over (which was fabulous!)  We got one little (11 lbs) turkey and cut it in half.  Half got smoked on the grill and half got roasted in the oven (after the entire thing had been in a brine for 24 hours).  BOTH halves turned out delicious and were super juicy.  It was hard to stop eating it, it was so yummy.  I also made my rolls which is essentially all the girls ate.  They’ll appreciate a good turkey one day.  It was good for me to know that I can do a big meal like that all on my own.  My parents did get quite a few calls though.  And I learned to not throw away the gizzards… you need that for the gravy!  The gravy turned out decent anyway, but I’m learning.

 

  

After a day of shopping for me on Black Friday, Stephen and I headed out to his 10 year High School Reunion that evening.  It was neat, although Stephen hardly knew anyone there (pretty much the same 7 people that I had met before that still live in Minnesota).  Of course with a graduating class of 700+ how can you even begin to make a dent?  I made my shirt for the occasion… well not the shirt, but I embellished it with some satin ribbon I had around.