Hello, Again!

Hi - maybe you remember me: I post here once in awhile.  Turns out to be more like once in a GREAT while lately.  I was hired by the middle school to be the accompanist for their choirs.  I spent almost all of November at school during the days.  It's a fun job for me, I love to accompany, but I got pretty behind on a few things, so now that the concert is over, I'm hopefully going to catch up on some things.

First, would be to update our lives on here.  I'm not even going to try and go in order.  Expect November's doings to be scattered all over the place over the next few days.

We'll kick things off with Thanksgiving since it was the easiest to pull up pictures from.

Mike's brother's family came up to Minnesota late Wednesday night.  We were up fairly late as well once they arrived but while we were waiting for them to drive up, we used our time to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner.

Maddie and I were in charge of desserts and any general baking.  This included rolls, two pies and a cheesecake.  Since our hands were pretty much full of flour or baking stuff, there's no pictures.

Jake's hands were full too: he and Mike were working on the Turkey.  Mike was fascinated with Jake's fascination.

Mike was planning on grilling the turkey again this year.  If you asked Jake however, it came out as, "I'm going to grill the turkey with dad."  It involved a great deal of prep:

Jake just studied everything and asked tons of questions.  Maddie worked in the corner and tried to ignore the raw bird they were digging through.  She was not intrigued at all.

Mike trussed up the turkey and they got everything in the fridge.

The boys grilled the turkey and it was so tasty!  This year Mike set the drip pans up differently and was able to catch the drippings so we could make a tasty gravy too - happiness all around!

I have no pictures of the meal.  It was a free-for-all at eating time.  I was too busy getting stuffed full of potatoes and all things Thanksgiving.

Friday night we headed to the Holidazzle parade....along with all of Minnesota.  It was 60 degrees and everyone was taking advantage of it!  It was a perfect night to be out and we were lucky enough to find a spot 45 minutes before the parade that we could squeeze most of the kids into...

Our guests left on Saturday afternoon.  The rest of the time we pretty much never saw the kids - some played, some talked, some watched football; all relaxed.  It was great to have them up here to celebrate all the things we have to be thankful for!