thanksgiving recap

Spent Thanksgiving with hubby1's family.   Thanksgiving day was filled with great food and a wild round of "house rules" pictionary.   The guys spent most of the day blowing up gophers with the a home built device that seriously blows up gopher tunnels. It's scary but works great.  As always, it rained on us on Friday...it's tradition.  Friday night was a quick run to the mall and dinnner at On the Border....good times.

But the best part of the whole weekend was the girls deciding we should take girl1 on a trip before she gets married.   So we sat down to figure out what would be the most fun.  It didn't take too long.  Here's what we will be doing in only 57 days:

Yep,  we be cruisin'!   heading to Mexico for 7 days....for about $600 per person.  woohoo for Travelocity!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

It's Thanksgiving!--which is becoming one of my favorite holidays.   You get all the fun times with family and friends without the pressure of finding a perfect gift....how great is that?!   Although, you don't get all the cool Christmas movies and the fun of creating the perfect Christmas tree.

anyhoos... here's the "oh so original list of things i'm thankful for"....

1.   family

2.  God

3.  funny, uber cute puppies

4.  Disneyland

5.  friends who understand the Disney thing

6.  friends who don't quite understand the Disney thing but love me anyways

7.  great music sang by great vocalists

8.  finding banking errors in my favor

9.  wide open roads and a hot convertible

10.  evenings with a great book, wrapped in a poofy blanket, and a fantastic cup of coffee

not very deep....but it is the simple things that make life sweet.....

tis the season...

.....to think about all the blessings in our lives. the fun thing is the my mom's maiden name is Blessing, which i've always thought was a really cool name. this is our official USAF photo from 1972. aren't we adorable? mom and dad are both gone and i miss them greatly. dad was, obviously, a military dad and we didn't see much of him. he had a love of history and shared his love of this country with us. i've seen more historical markers than probably 90% of the country. it became a family joke, but i think we all appreciate the time he took to teach us.

mom was stronger than she knew and stood in the gap while dad was overseas. she was the glue that held us together and we knew better than to cross her. she was super smart and her sense of humor demonstrated that intelligence.

those handsome guys next to me are the brothers. they live fairly close, but we don't see each other as often as we should. we all hate it, but jobs and kids' activities make it difficult. we always have a blast when we do manage to be in the same place at the same time.

because we were air force, we moved often. Dad always took extra leave so we could sneak in a vacation with the move (hence all the historical markers). those trips were so much fun and are the things that we talk and laugh over whenever we're together.

this is one of those relocating vacations. we're at Gettysburg and both of the cars in the front are ours. I think this was the move from New Jersey to North Dakota. That's us on the steps of the monument and there are better pictures of us, but the cars in front made me smile.

i love that it's raining and no one else is there. I so remember that day. We walked all over the place and Dad recounted different battles and their significance. I don't remember the weather being icky....funny how that works.

so the blessings i count today are a family who knew the importance of spending time together and the memories that we share.

where's the beef (broth)?

the productivity continues....3 days in a row and massive amounts of things crossed off the "to do eventually" list. strange things afoot...hmmmmm

anyhoos....we have a new grocery store super close to my house, so i decided to check it out today. i like grocery shopping as long as i don't have to rush through it. i like having time to visit with friends that i run into there and to do price comparisons and just browse through the aisles looking for fun stuff to try.

today was Thanksgiving shopping and i REALLY like shopping for the holiday meals. but shopping for a major meal in a brand new store was probably not the most brilliant plan. I did manage to get in most of my 10,000 daily steps cuz i couldn't find ANYTHING. but neither could anyone else and it became sort of a running gag with the shoppers.

We started asking what each other was looking for and if we found it, we'd make a note of it's location for when saw each other again. even the employees were having trouble finding things. the most sought after item today? chicken or beef broth.....

the other thing? and this is strange for our town, it was mostly men shopping today. doing the whole turkey dinner shopping. i can't imagine sending my hubby to do that even with a detailed list. although, it might start some new holiday meal traditions.

my favorite dish on Thanksgiving is brussel sprouts sauteed with bacon. what's yours?