flying through the forest….ok, so I don’t know where that exactly came from but oh well

Lots of time has flown by over the past few weeks with very little updating on my journal. I’ve been swamped at work and at home plus have the distraction of WoW again. I’ll recap as brief as I can for those that are so bored or interested to read it.

Thanksgiving week~ Patrick’s parents drove in on Monday and stayed the evening with us. We were taken out to a wonderful dinner at one of our favorite nice restaurants in town. A very yummy dinner with oysters and scallop appetizer dishes, bottles of amazing wine, pollo da vinci chicken entree and then a free Tiramisu along with the other desert of white chocolate ice cream with strawberries. We went grocery shopping with a list a mile long for Thanksgiving afterwards and i’d be lying if I didn’t say the wine was treating me very well by then. Luckily, I forget very few items from my list and i’m even more thankful I did make a list because in my condition we’d have spent hours wandering around. I took Wednesday off from work so I could clean up and then pick up my family from the airport. I arrived at the airport shortly before they met me at baggage claim and was pratically bouncing off walls when I saw my mom walk up with the kitten in her little carrier. She was just as adorable as I thought she’d be!!! (pics to follow below of course!)

I barely slept the night before Turkey day because I was thinking of everything I had to do. *sighs* I woke up to Patrick cooking my family waffles for breakfast while I got showered and dressed. I was so relieved to see him helping out. I spent most of my morning chopping and preparing dishes for later in the day plus I had a ton of help from my mom and step-dad on the turkey preparations. Patrick’s family arrived around noonish and I spent most of the day in the kitchen like a good wife/hostess.

Menu info~
Apps…the basics:
spinach cheese dip ~ HUGE hit and everyone wanted the recipe
veggies and dill ranch dip
chips & homemade salsa with guac also.

Dinner:
17 lb. Turkey & a Honeybaked Ham
Salad with all the proper veggies
Mashed Potatoes & Gravy of course
Potatoe dish from my step-mom’s recipe ~ HUGE hit also and my favorite
Green Bean caserole dish from my step-mom’s recipe ~another recipe people wanted
2 Kinds of Stuffing - Apple, cranberry with walnut stuffing that Patrick’s mom made & the other was a Oyster Stuffing my mom helped make (odd but good)
Drunkenberries aka cranberries made with lots of booze from Patrick’s mom (VERY good and I don’t even like cranberries)

Desert:
Trifle~everyone ate this instead of pumpkin pie even!
Pumpkin Pie
Lemon something that I can’t spell pie

We have leftovers still but have been eatting them down very fast! Overall, everything was a great success and we got LOTS of compliments on the house and how well our kitchen handles big functions. I’m sure i’ll post pictures once they start sending them to me in emails.

Friday, I took my family up to Tahoe since my brothers have never been. We kind of walked around the shopping area of Heavanly in downtown South Lake and then drove around for some picture spots. We made a pitstop on the way home at In and Out Burger for my brothers since Justin was craving it. (they don’t have that in Colorado of course)

That evening my mom and I ran amuck to get our Xmas tree!!! I went with a prelit tree from Lowe’s that cost me almost $200 but worth every penny imo. I got a very nice tree skirt and stockings to match from there as well that match our green theme due to the fireplace tile being green. This year we are going with a blue, silver, green year for our Xmas decor after seeing some very pretty things at Target. Our second stop was Pier One for ornaments, an angel and other misc. xmasy things. Lastly and by far the most expensive besides the tree was Target. I bought oodles of things there and the previous week I was there buying Blue Icicle lights for the house, white snowflake lights for outside along our front porch railing etc. I’ll post picks after we put them up but we are waiting for the blizzard remains to thaw out some. It was a fun shopping affair according to my mom because she loves xmas stuff shopping and didn’t even have to spend money but had fun! I’m glad I had her helping me and I wouldn’t have bought nearly as cool of stuff without her. That night we spent decorating it while listening to sappy xmas music.

I convinced Patrick to take them to the airport the next morning but I did not realize that it was going to be a blizzard and at 4:30 he drove them through white out conditions into Reno. They were lucky enough to sit on the runway for hours waiting for plows and deicing before finally getting out of here. They were one of the ONLY planes to leave Reno that day because they ended up shutting down the airport. JOY!

Anyhow, that’s the Turkey week in as short of a recap as I could make it!

~pictures to come soon..must get some work done!

heather