A Tofurkey is a relatively easy lump of soy to cook. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to cook it. You could just leave it on the counter until it reaches room temperature and you're good to go.
A real turkey?
Well, that's a bird of a different color.
Since it's B.Y.O.T(urkey) in this house, my brother was kind enough to volunteer to cook a real turkey (of the non-soy variety) for the carnivorous guests. He & the family arrived in the morning to allow plenty of cooking time before our 3:00 dinner. But when 2:00 came and went and that cute little turkey carcass was still luke warm, we knew we had problems. Stove problems.
The guests had two choices. Eat our Tofurkey or wait it out for the real deal. Can you guess what they chose?
But there was a silver lining to waiting out that extra three hours. It was the most leisurely holiday we've ever had, in which we found plenty of other things to do besides actually eating Thanksgiving dinner.
We chilled. No agenda, just good old family hang out time. A Thanksgiving miracle!
All those extra hours gave me plenty of time to be reminded of all the things for which I'm thankful:
We wish everyone a Happy Turkey* Day!
* Turkey may be substituted for a 3 pound ball of soy, stuffed with tofu "giblet" and sided with tofurky jerky wishstix
I've been meaning to plan a weekend away with the older boys since between school, homework, sports, and music commitments, our qt time is a rarity. And lets face it, it won't be long before quality time with Mom will be about as appealing to them as a root canal.
So I packed up the car early Saturday and off we drove to a Marriott that evidently boasts one of the biggest indoor water parks on the face of the planet. Now, I'm not exactly a water park kind of gal. At the risk of sounding even crazier than previously perceived, I have issue with germs and sharing pool water with hundreds of people, most of whom are under the age of ten and well, why would they choose to take a potty break when they can just...you know where I'm going with this, right?
But I took one for the team because 1) I knew the boys would have the time of their life and 2) the thought of getting a full night of uninterrupted sleep in a hotel room was too good to pass up. Ironically, Puck ended up sleeping through the night at home with dad and I ended up listening to the guests in the next room practice what I could only imagine to be some kind of clog dancing routine until the wee hours.
The park was insane, with water canons, slides, rafts, tube rides, and pretty much anything else imaginable. And as long as no one develops any kind of unusual skin conditions in the next week or so, I would call the weekend a 'splashing' success.
Channeling my inner Mrs. Frizzle, I took the kids to the Aquarium again. It's one of their favorite field trip destinations, but this had nothing to do with the beluga tank, seal lion show, or ray petting pool. It's about the french friends. Evidently throughout the past few years as I've been taking them to every educational attraction in a three state radius, they've been hard at work surveying and rating the snack bar fries.
Would you like to see some more evidence showing that even if you ban toy weaponry from your kids' toy box, they still may grow up to be social deviants?
This is what happens when you leave a sweet, innocent five year old alone in the craft room with her older brothers:
This post is a tribute to the ass kicking ladies of the Breakers who took me under their wing this season as their novice recruit and showed me a new meaning for the term Soccer Mom. I've played on an indoor rec league with some of these women the past few winters, but transitioning from indoor (think beer pong) to the outdoor state league (think varsity) was a big leap for me.
They know how to play hard & have fun. They are the (ball) Breakers.
This is Book 12 of The Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan. Robert Jordan died before he could finish this series and had promised to wrap it up in a final book called "A Memory Of Light" even if it had to be 1500 pages long. Brandon Sanderson was commissioned to finish the series using the aid of Jordan's notes and parts of the story he had relayed to his wife, Harriett. Sanderson found so much material that he, Harriett and TOR publishing company decided to release "A Memory Of Light" in three books. "The Gathering Storm" is the first part of AMOL and I could not imagine cutting any of the 766 pages.
Fantastic! A+
Daily life in the house of Spiderbyte can be pretty crazed, but when we're one parent down and the ratio shifts to 4:1 things get downright ugly.
With Jason in San Francisco this week for work, my strategy has been to shock & awe them with distractions so they lack time/energy to fight, whine, bicker, bitch, moan, mess make, complain, and did I mention fight?
It hasn't worked.
As a matter of fact when Spiderdad called to "video chat" with us tonight, he had to witness me physically breaking up a brawl right there on the video screen as they attempted to gouge each other's eyes out in pursuit of screen time. I'm sure it made him miss us...err, you are coming home, right?
When Monday's forecast called for temps in the high 60's, it didn't take me long to figure out what to do once I put the older boys on the school bus...cancel all otherwise imperative tasks on the schedule and head straight to the beach.
