Home for Thanksgiving

I wasn't prepared for Thanksgiving weekend to be over to quickly. I wanted to be more on top of things when we got back. Now I'm scrambling! So of course I must stay up a few hours later than normal to catch up (try) with reading blogs. :) And then I must end the late night with a quick post so I can cross something off my list.

Quick recap on our festivities:

We drove up to Salem to my parents house and spent the weekend with my parents and all but one of my siblings. It was the first time I'd been to Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house in almost a decade. Crazy. Since we're staying home for Christmas, Matt took some extra time off for a long weekend away.

The big event of this turkey dinner, other than feeding 20 people (almost half under age 5), was cooking two birds. One was your basic storebought Broad Breasted White (dubbed Norbert). The other was a free-range locally raised bird that we named Herbert Ninnenger. Matt and I were in charge of cooking the birds. Since the free-range bird was easily 4 times the price, we didn't take this responsibility lightly. Armed with a Cook's Illustrated recipe, we unconventionally cut the legs and wings off from the breast, brined and roasted the bird in 5 parts. It worked pretty well and enabled an equal side by side comparison and a decent table presentation. The most striking difference was the dark meat. Herbert Ninnenger's flavor was more complex, not to mention its/his/her thighs and wings were easily twice the size as the factory-raise bird.






The food was great. The table set-up was a recent addition to my parents house: they exchanged the free conference room table they'd had for close to 20 years for 6 or so modular rectangle tables from a local restaurant that went out of business. My sister Heather gives more details here.














The next day Matt and I were able to take the first part of the day and go to the Portland Temple where we were married. Then we got to eat out at a restaurant for lunch. Chevy's. Mmmm. Without children. We also stopped by Trader Joes for some yummy stuff. It was a fun treat.


(playing school, storytime)

Later that day we rounded up the cousins and rode the Salem Riverfront Carousel. There was a new feature: catching the brass ring from the mouth of a salmon cutout. If you got the gold ring you'd get a free ride. Since it's a new feature, there was a naming contest. The kids and Matt came up with two entries: Gil and Splashy. Other than Henry almost falling off when they restarted the ride and Evalyn teetering on melt-down if she didn't get on the hourse she wanted, it was a great outing.





Saturday was the big Girls Day Out. We drove up to Portland: IKEA, lunch at Burgerville (local chain that serves locally grown/raised food) Powell's City of Books, wasted time trying to get out of the city center, and a brief stop at REI before heading home. I ventured out on my own to Kohl's later that evening and found some great deals there.

While we were out, Matt and Oswaldo took the kids to Ankeny Wildlife Refuge. There was a bit of juggling with car seats, being down a minivan, so Ben got to ride in our van, which Evalyn was excited about.





Sunday was church and family time (Heather's new baby girl, Julia Blyn, was blessed). She's a sweet little baby, and looks so much like her big brother! Except "pink" of course.



We had some leisure game time and then we left for home Monday morning with a leisure stop in Ashland as the coolest game store ever. I really really want to own Settlers of Cataan now. And if I can actually find someone to play it with me, the Seafarer's expsansion looks pretty cool too.

Now I'm thrust into a crazy haze of so many needs to get checked off that I don't even know where to start! Matt's birthday, cards, shopping, decorating, sewing, cooking, wrapping..... maybe things will feel better this weekend.