Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!! We had a great week. We got a lot of canning done. Brent worked on his class and we simply relaxed and spent time with the girls. On Friday we decorated the tree and Brent put some lights on the house.

Brent's turkey was beautiful and so very good. He also made the best apple pie he's ever made. And I made my first batch of dinner rolls. They were really dense, but not bad. The girls liked them at least. They would only eat the rolls, so I guess that's a good thing. I was also in charge of my Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes, which were awesome. Brent even liked them, and that's saying a lot.

Mariska was hilarious on Thanksgiving. As Brent was basting the turkey she says, "I think the turkey is saying (then her voice turns into a high pitched whine) "Why are you cooking me?!?" - It was so funny. Then as we were forcing her to try at least one bite of everything, we really worked on saying things nicer... when she ate the sweet potatoes she said, "Those were disgusting!" We talked about needing to say things in a more polite way, to not hurt people's feelings. She tried the green bean casserole and said, "I don't care about that." Meaning she doesn't care for it much because it's not very good. Then she tried the stuffing. The look on her face was priceless. You could tell she thought it was the most vile thing she's ever put into her mouth, but was really struggling to be nice about it. After about 20 seconds of her not swallowing, I told her she could go spit it into the garbage. But we at least got her to try everything, even if she just ended up filling up on bread and strawberry milk.

The next day we decorated the tree. Mariska loved opening each ornament and hearing the story of why we bought the ones we had. We have the family tradition of buying each other (and the girls) a new tree ornament every year. Brynley helped by showing us how high we needed to put them up onto the tree and putting play food into one bucket, dumping it out and moving it to another. She's a real help.

Now we're back to life. Brent is back to work, counting down the days to his Christmas break and being called totally inaccurate racial slurs by angry skinny little kids. (Really funny, long story - let's just say one student seems to be color blind) Brynley is starting to understand so much more and even saying 2 word sentences. She's also making sure our "snotty nose wiping" quota is met. I'm becoming obsessed with food storage and desperately trying to stay off desserts until Christmas break. And Mariska is almost jumping out of her skin with excitement over their birthday party coming up on Saturday. Speaking of which, I better get planning some games!!