turkey day and beyond

we had an absolutely wonderful thanksgiving day last thursday. we were to bring drinks and dessert, but got a phone call from my mom on wednesday night asking if we could cook the turkey and bring it along too. it turns out that the turkey she got (20+ pounds) was much too big to fit into the roaster she has (her oven's broken), so she brought the turkey out to us on wednesday night and peter was kind enough to get up early on thursday morning to pull out all the turkey nasties, rinse the turkey and put it in the oven. erik woke up shortly after, and i brought him into bed with me and dozed off for a bit while he watched sesame street. it was really nice having peter home in the morning ... he had just found out the day before that he wouldn't have to work. the three of us had a nice quiet breakfast together and we watched for our friend johnny who was one of the handlers for the buzz lightyear balloon in the macy's thanksgiving day parade. we didn't see him, but did see him in photos later on. my mom arrived with her infamous and most delicious stuffing around 1pm, and we packed up the turkey and the four of us headed up to evans city to my brother's house. the timing of the drive was just right and erik had a nice nap on the way. we hit little traffic and made it there in no time. i got to spend some time playing with morgan, marisa, and erik (maggie was napping) while chrissy, my mom, and the men were in the kitchen finishing up the meal preparations. it was fun! we were playing songs on their keyboard and making silly videos.


erik managed to find probably the only 2 cars in this house with 3 little girls and had a great time playing with them and all the toys. marisa and morgan were very kind and let erik play in their rooms and he was very good and didn't mess with their things.

dinner was a delicious traditional thanksgiving feast! we had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, rolls, cranberry sauce, and a most yummy cranberry casserole made by chrissy. here is a picture of my, er, abundant plate:

maggie slept through dinner so chrissy was able to enjoy her meal and feed her a little bit later. after we ate, somehow i ended up getting out of cleaning detail and instead played in marisa's room with the little ones. erik's new favorite thing in the world is alvin and the chipmunks, as we listened and danced to their cd while the girls continued to be very silly:

it was really cute watching the toddlers play together:

we spent a lot of time just playing and hanging out while the men did most of the messy work in the kitchen and then watched the obligatory thanksgiving day football game(s). erik was tired from the large meal and all the playing and took a nap in marisa's bed. my mom napped next to him for awhile. a bit later on we had some really good pies from eat'n park - dutch apple and pumpkin. YUM! chrissy caught me playing with marisa's spongebob toy ... i couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures of it:


it was a really great day. i think everyone had a lot of fun ... i know i did! we're so lucky to have family close by, and that our family is so much fun to spend time with!

peter had to work both friday and saturday so erik and i were on our own. erik spent most of the two days testing my patience! friday we slept in and went to the grocery (which was totally devoid of black friday shoppers)to get the stuff i needed for turkey stock and some other things. i made a huge batch of stock with the turkey carcass and froze about half and used the rest for turkey orzo soup. it came out pretty well i think. i also made meatloaf so we would have enough leftovers to carry us through most of the weekend without cooking. i use this strategy often! on saturday we slept in again and i felt like we needed to get out of the house, so i decided to go to century III mall. i normally would avoid the mall on the weekend after thanksgiving, but this particular mall, while huge, is usually a ghost town. i tried to steal my sis-in-law chrissy's brilliant idea of dressing erik up in a cute christmas-y outfit and taking pictures with the decorations at the mall, but as soon as i let him out of his stroller, he ran away from me as fast as he could go. i managed to get an interesting shot of his reflection in a christmas tree bulb and a couple others, but nothing christmas card worthy.


later in the afternoon, i couldn't stand erik's bouncing off the walls anymore so i bundled him up and went to the playground for the first time in many weeks. he was so excited to be there, but it was pretty chilly and he only wanted to play for about a half hour. still, i could tell he was grateful for the outside time, and so was i!


on sunday, peter was home (finally!!!) and we spent the day hanging out and did a little shopping. we had decided that we were going to get erik a train table and set for christmas because we know he would love it so much. he's played with it at the toy store before and it's the perfect toy for him and something he'll hopefully enjoy for a long long time. we worked out a plan for me to distract erik while peter bought the set and stashed it in his trunk, but unfortunately they were out of them. :( they said that they get shipments all the time, so hopefully (fingers crossed!) we'll be able to get it before christmas.

whew! that was a lot of catching up for one post! i have a lot more to fill in but will have to do it a little bit later!