Making Butter

Joey made butter once at preschool last year and for months he's been asking me if we could make butter at home. Finally we had tons of leftover cream from Thanksgiving, so I threw it in the Tupperware shaker and said "here, go crazy." Every 30 seconds he would stop and come to me and say "is it done yet?" and want to open the bottle and look. He said at preschool they went outside and jumped with the cream for half an hour, but I can't figure out how they got that to work. We shook 'til Joey was exhausted and I was sick of the whole thing and we still didn't even have whipped cream. So I poured it into the Kitchenaid and turned it on High. It still took forever. I thought it was going to stay in the whipped cream stage permanently. Then, all of the sudden, I heard sloshsloshslosh from the mixer, and there was butter! It tasted so yummy on my homemade bread!




 

Sam at the Window

Sam begged me to take this while I was on the porch photographing the wreath. It turned out really cute, I thought! 

Starting the Decorating

My Christmas decorating has begun. I bought this wreath in late January at a craft store for $2 on clearance. I LOVE it!


Then I picked up a couple garlands on sale too.



I have yet to get out the Big Christmas Decoration Box. The kids keep pestering me about it, so, soon.... 

Ellie and Her Grandma

 

Sitting Down to Eat

 

Before Dinner

Here are some pictures that show how we passed the time before Thanksgiving Dinner was ready:




 

Back Up A Bit

Here are the pictures Charlotte took of Jared's birthday:




 

Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner Table Antics

Let's just say Sam and Joey weren't notably impressed with the feast. (Just before this picture was taken we had to tell Sam to pull up his pants, hee hee!) They ate about four bites each, monkeyed around for a minute, and then ran off to play.


 

Ellie's First Thanksgiving

In this picture she is eyeing Daddy's amazing stuffing, but all she really had was a banana and a small piece of roll.

 

My Plate

Here's what I ate.... I had no room for seconds!


 

The Feast

The best Thanksgiving dinner of my life deserves lots of posts on my blog!

Here is the yam and apple bake, made in Charlotte's dutch oven on my back porch, sweetened with maple syrup, and better by far than anything else I have ever seen anyone do with yams:


Oh, and on the left there is fresh cranberry sauce: cranberries and an orange run through the food processor with some sugar. Ohhhh, yum!


Here is Jared's turkey again-- we barely made a dent in this pile of meat, so we're going to get to enjoy it for days!


The mashed potatoes made with cream cheese! On the right is traditional Green Bean Bake, which I never even ate any of because I got full before I got to it!


My mom's rolls are heavenly!



WE ARE SO BLESSED!!!!! 

Jared's Masterpiece

This was, without a doubt, the best turkey I have ever eaten in my life! Jared is the greatest!

 

Jared Prepares the Turkey

There will be many more blog posts on our Thanksgiving dinner, I'm sure, but here's how it all started this morning, with Jared preparing the 22 lb turkey the way his gourmet friend told him to. It's going to be a great day!


 

Jared's Birthday Dinner

Jared says it's no fun having a birthday at Thanksgiving time, but this time it worked out wonderfully. My parents and sister Charlotte arrived the evening of his birthday dinner to stay at our home through Thanksgiving and it was so jolly to share Jared's birthday feast with them. They arrived to the smell of Polish stew and steamed artichokes and fresh rolls. We had one of those warm, cozy, wonderful family dinners where there is good conversation and lots of love and laughter (yes, there are still families like this left in America!) Then Jared opened his presents-- those pictures are on Charlotte's camera so I don't know when they'll get blogged. We finished off the evening with banana cream pie... mmmm.....

 

Artichokes!

A couple weeks ago when we were planning Jared's birthday I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he said "artichokes!" Neither of us have had an artichoke for years, so this was to be quite the adventure. First of all, the local grocery store was out of them when we went shopping (why did they run out of artichokes right before Thanksgiving?) But then... Jared was on a layover in Portland, Oregon the night before his birthday and he found some at a grocery store near the Portland airport. He bought three nice big ones and flew them home to us. Imported artichokes! How exciting. Joey thought they were cool. Sam was disturbed by them, as this picture shows:


But then when it was time to Eat them, it was Sam who loved them and Joey who was disturbed. Here is Sam digging his teeth into freshly steamed artichoke:

 

Sam's Lines

For over a year now, Sam has been arranging things into lines. I love the way his mind works!