Thanksgiving

 I hope everyone had a fabulous Thanksgiving if you celebrate Thanksgiving, and if not, a wonderful Thursday and subsequent weekend! As for us, it was our year to visit my dad's side of the family in Arkansas, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. I have four cousins and two of them have kids now (and the third has one due in six weeks), and it's awesome how much the kids enjoy playing with each other. It helps now that they remember each other even though we have to go at least six months without seeing them! Miss Pink and my oldest cousin K's daughter are both 8, and they remind us so much of us at their age. Mr. Blue and A's son, also 5, played football and kickball and basically any sport played with a ball every waking moment. K also has a 5 year old girl who flitted around with whatever group she wanted to join, and A's almost-two-year-old little boy stole all our hearts. A also has a 10-week-old baby girl, who was in much demand for snuggles.

I ate enough to make me change into my stretchy pants as soon as decently possible after dinner, but I was a little disappointed that there were only about three tablespoons of dressing left over. My aunt told my mom to make only one pan since there had been too much left over when we had two pans last time. Oh well, we made up for our lack of extra dressing by having lots of extra desserts. I had offered to make chocolate-chip pumpkin bread and chocolate-chip cookies (shut up, chocolate is important to me) because I only knew about a pumpkin pie (which I don't like) and a "Death By Chocolate" thing with brownies and chocolate mousse and whipped cream and crushed Heath bars. Which, YES PLEASE, but to me the important thing about Thanksgiving desserts is that there be MANY of them so you can get a sliver of each one and alternate bites of them, going around and around the plate until you collapse into a diabetic coma...and then do it all over again that night. My aunt and cousins did not disappoint me. There was also a coconut cake and a peach cobbler and a pecan pie. So six desserts if you don't count the pumpkin bread, which you shouldn't because we only ate that for a SNACK.

Speaking of food, my uncle and cousin W have become vegetarians since the last holiday we spent together. My youngest cousin, whose name also starts with K, and I were discussing if we could ever be vegetarians and he said, "I don't think I could ever give up bacon." And I agreed. So I suggested a new lifestyle choice: baconarians. Baconarians eat vegetables, fruit...and bacon. Think about it. What isn't made more delicious by bacon? I think we're onto something here.

So now that Thanksgiving is gone, I can finally start to get in the Christmas spirit. (Not by shopping on Black Friday--there is not enough anti-anxiety medication in the world!) Miss Pink's 9th birthday is in two weeks and then Christmas is upon us. Here's to a great Christmas in 2011!

Made of Awesome

It has come to my attention that I only post when school's not in session (and then not very often). Well, that's just the way it is, I guess. I miss blogging, I still read plenty of blogs, and I even think about posting something that's too long to go on Twitter but my brain just doesn't seem able to put coherent thoughts together after I get done with everything else I need to do. But today was the first day of my Thanksgiving break and I spent it sleeping, watching TV, reading, and eating or providing food for the kids. It was awesome. It was so great to have a weekend day when I didn't have to do anything that day because I wouldn't have the time or energy to do it come Monday. And also, having older kids is wonderful. I have been dreaming of the day when they would let me sleep in (well, 7:30's not too bad) and could pour their own cereal, which they did today with some "encouragement" from me and Justin. Although Mr. Blue kept asking me to get up and make the blueberry muffins until I finally did. And THEN I went back to sleep. 

Justin finally has time to work on the remodel of the master bathroom. He already did the shower earlier this year and it is so nice. Today he took out the old vanity and redid the plumbing so the new sink will be in the middle (the next best thing to having two sinks) and also put in some sheetrock so there will be a pocket door giving us some privacy between the bedroom and the sink/closet area. He was the very opposite of lazy today, and he is nice enough not to even comment that I was a total slug.

Last night the first Twilight movie was on TV and we finally watched it. I read all the books but I had deliberately resisted watching the movies. (I do this a lot; I hold out against a trend and then finally cave when it's no longer cool to jump on the bandwagon. Examples: knee-high boots, Facebook, and now Twilight.) And it was just like the books: I could tell how ridiculous so much of it is, but I was powerless to resist watching it. Like crack for the female brain. I kept snorting derisively but didn't change the channel, and I even checked to see if the next two movies were coming on, which they were not, except on Showtime, which we don't have. For some reason they aren't even available to rent from U-verse, which is
not even right, since they have been out for a long time. How am I supposed to get my Twilight fix now? I've found that it's like a fever: best to let it run its course.

(YA fiction sidenote: I'm not even waiting to watch The Hunger Games movie when it comes out. I won't be at the premiere or maybe even get to the theater to watch it, but I won't wait several years, either. Today I read most of the book Divergent, which I'm betting will become a movie, too, and that should be good too. Both of those heroines are at least stronger than Bella.)

When the movie was over, Justin said, "I know why Edward had to have all that hair. If he was bald like me, his head would sparkle so much everyone would know he was a vampire." And then right before we fell asleep, he busts out with, "I can't stop fantasizing about how beautifully my head would sparkle in the sunlight." We laughed until our stomachs hurt.

Now that is true love. Awesome.