Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving dinner was perfect. Jamie and I cooked for most of the day and only made it outside for a brief walk around the park and watched the football pick up games going on. My parents, brother, Grandpa, Aunt Milissa, Val, Aaron, and their foreign exchange student, Minji from Korea, joined us for Thanksgiving. The turkey came out amazing, it was so moist and fell apart when you cut it with a fork. Jamie and I were pretty impressed with ourselves.

Desert was amazing as well. Both the pumpkin and cherry were so good and they taste so good together. It's not Thanksgiving without them.

Here we are, all sitting at the table, a difficult picture to take. We all had a great holiday together. This was our third year cooking Thanksgiving dinner and I think we've finally got it down. We had plenty of food and plenty of left-overs. We had turkey, stuffing and cranberry sandwiches all weekend. It was fantastic!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving and we'll be cooking up a feast for this afternoon. While we have Turkey, mashed potatoes & gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, veggies, dinner rolls, and desert of pumpkin pie and my mom's famous cherry pie, the holiday is really about more than just food. According to here it all started in 1621:

"In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast which is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. This harvest meal has become a symbol of cooperation and interaction between English colonists and Native Americans. Although this feast is considered by many to the very first Thanksgiving celebration, it was actually in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops. Native American groups throughout the Americas, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Creek and many others organized harvest festivals, ceremonial dances, and other celebrations of thanks for centuries before the arrival of Europeans in North America."

It was more than 200 years later that President Abraham Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November as a national day of thanksgiving and Congress finally made Thanksgiving Day an official national holiday in 1941.

As food is plentiful and the winters aren't really that harsh (especially in California) here is what I am thankful for:

I'm thankful for shelter. I still come home every night and can't believe our house is really ours.

I'm thankul for work. Jamie and I are so lucky not just to be employed but to really enjoy what we do, where we work, and who we work with.

I'm thankful for friends. We have such a diverse group of friends who are all different and great in their own ways. They've shown us so many different perspectives and are always there for us.

I'm thankful for my amazing husband. He is far too good to me and life is so much better when he is around :)

I'm thankful for family. It's been a happy year with two new babies coming into the family and yet a difficult year for both sides of our families, having lost loved ones. I'm happy we don't have to go through it alone and can count on each other for support, guidance, and friendship.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

This Week's Update...

There's not a whole lot to report this week. I was sick last weekend, nearly the whole weekend, which was not very nice. I stayed home from work on Monday and then made it through the rest of the week on cold/flu medicine. Luckily, it was just a fever and a tired and achy body. I did manage to go to my Mom's Birthday party at Z-Tejas on Saturday night. Lot's of fun and great food.

This last weekend we bought a new 46" LCD TV. The living room is finally coming together and looking amazing. It's still spacious but doesn't feel as empty as it did before.

We also saw A Christmas Carol in 3D at the IMAX - Irvine Spectrum. It was pretty amazing, the theater alone was unbelievable. It was a good movie but the 3D effects made it even better.

My cousin also had their baby on Sunday, Morning. Carter Michael Carrillo was 9lbs 2oz and a week early. Both Mama and Baby are doing well and Nana Nancy is absolutely thrilled.

With Thanksgiving just over a week away we will be preparing to have it at our house for the first time. It should be fun and the 4 day weekend will be much appreciated! Hope everyone has a great week =>

Halloween

Well, Halloween was last Saturday and it was busy as usual. That morning, my amazing husband surprised me with a Halloween gift. To my surprise it was a Peanuts puzzle in the shape of a pumpkin! My parents came over for dinner and helped give out candy (they don't have as many trick-or-treaters in their neighborhood). So we had a fantastic dinner, watched the World Series game, gave out a ton of candy to both young and far to old to be asking for candy, and my Mom and I worked on the puzzle. It's A LOT harder when it's in the shape of a pumpkin. There were so many curved pieces and oddly shaped ones it was really difficult to get used to. But after a while your conventional wisdom of how a puzzle should work dies down and you learn how to adapt to a curved world.

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Botero

Sunday, we went to the Bowers Museum to see the Fernando Botero exhibit. As it was the first Sunday of the Month we were able to get in free, Thank You Target! We got there just as the museum opened, thanks to the time change it really wasn't much effort to get there by 10am :), and we beat the crowd so we got to see the pieces at our leisure.

Colombian artist Fernando Botero is known for his unique style. He is recognized and renowned world-wide for the voluminous forms and sensuous figures found within his painting, sculpture and works on paper. He is very adamant that his figures are not fat but voluptuous or voluminous. He has been painting since the 1950s and at 77 years old he is still creating unique paintings and sculptures.

The exhibit is pretty impressive and is compiled from his own personal collections. There are so many amazing and amusing pieces but this one of course stuck out. It's called the 'English Ambassador' (complete with bola hat and of course a British flag!!). If you get a chance to see the exhibit it's well worth it.