Thanksgiving 2017

I used to try to think of really clever titles for my blogposts but these days I'm mostly about basic description.  It makes it easier for archival/searching purposes.

Anyway, quick before it's Christmas!!!  Thanksgiving did happen and it was really nice.

We started out with our fourth annual Thanksgiving Day Murdock Trail 5K fun run/walk/stroll/bike/trot (don't dogs trot?).  The weather was positively balmy, and I think this was The Wife's first time not being pregnant and sick so she could join us, hurrah, and we expanded to include one of Matt's work friends!  And of course Heather who is practically family.  Maybe we'll make it a more open invitation next year, just in case people are interested.  There were plenty of pumpkin streusel muffins and bananas to go around.  Adelaide came in first (my time was __:__).

Can you tell who was Photoshopped in?  I actually followed through this time!

This was actually taken on MY phone by Julie as she crossed the finish line, since I dropped it when I turned around at the halfway mark...  Thanks for saving it, Heather!

A family that runs together... runs together.

Wife making one of her legendary cakes.  Sweet potato!  With marshmallow icing on top!  And pecan garnish!

Om nom nom

Boy is starting to get the idea about Thanksgiving dinner, and he and cousin Link found a great spot to enjoy their rolls. 

Parallel MDGs

Dinner was really lovely and Sleigh Ride was practiced and it was a great day and I can't believe it's already December and WHERE did 2017 go???

8 Years!

Yesterday we celebrated our 8th anniversary!  I was at work of course but I was trying to decide what my wife would like most of all for an anniversary gift and I decided what she would probably want was time, so I arranged for my parents to pick up the two older kids and take them away for the morning, where they had a grand time playing with cousins (thanks again, Mom and Dad and Auntie Elise and cousins!), and then I came home a little early from work with flowers and so-so sushi from Walmart so that I could take over when they woke up from their naps so she had the rest of the afternoon free too, and then surprised her with this:

Still working on likenesses, but you get the idea.

Then we hired a really fun babysitter and took to La Jolla Groves for a delicious dinner with a little plus-one:

Such an adorable tagalong, and he didn't make a peep.

Then we went home and I sabotaged my own food dehydrator gift secret and then we shared some amazing cupcakes from the shop downtown and watched Psych until we couldn't make it through two episodes and crashed after a long and fun day.

The kids told us this morning that they want to get married (not to each other), and if that's not a ringing endorsement of how we're doing, I don't know what is!  It's wonderful to have a partner who's clever and lovely and takes care of so many things and makes me laugh.  All the love to my Juliet (as in O'Hara, not Capulet).

The real deal.  Smoldering back when it used to be called (yikes) smizing.

Day of Giving Thanks 2015

Something I have noticed lately is that holidays and time off mean a lot more when you actually have to leave your house to go to work, and this year Thanksgiving break was just the thing.  It was so nice to (sleep in and) spend more time with my peeps and eat together and be thankful for each other.

There were various festivities this year.  First, of course we had the T-Gives treatment in Thanksgiving, which was a big hit.  I try to pick songs the kids might not know that well (or at all) totally on purpose, because there are so many songs we just don't get to ever sing.  Not on my watch!

We said if the feathers were all plucked he would get eaten.  Lucky thing, we ran out of time both times.

Next was a fun potluck lunch at work, which was a big success.  Everyone signed up for things and some went above and beyond to make the real deal (I will say that my gravy was worth the wait).  It's fun to work in an office so I can finally participate in these sorts of things that I heretofore had only heard about afterward.  We all ate too much (of course), but we were glad it was two full days before actual Thanksgiving so we wouldn't be burned out, as if.

It was amazing!  A full Thanksgiving spread.

Don't forget the pie!  I can personally attest that at least 2/3 of this was delicious.

Maybe I collected this plate of seconds just to take this picture, and then again, maybe I didn't.

Then came the actual day!  It was bright and clear and cold and very nice.  In years past my sister has organized a Turkey Trot event, but as time has gone by things have been busier or we've opted for other happenings, so when I asked and found out there wasn't anything planned this year, I decided to plan my own!  I like a T-Gives morning run, so even if it ended up being a couple of people or even just myself it would be fun.  Despite the cold, a great group of family (including out-of-towner visitors Emily and the trips!) met at the trailhead and took more or less my usual run along the trail and back.  It ended up being just about 3.5 miles, and Katy (who insists she's not much of a runner) pulled ahead in the end to beat me and Little Miss.  Some walked, some ran, some biked, some went the whole length and some turned around whenever they felt like it, and there were treats and overall I think it was really fun for all.  (Not to mention FREE.)  New tradish?!?  I'll bring the Costco pumpkin streusel muffins again...

Baby's first 5K!

Not a bad turnout!  Thanks for coming, everyone!  Same time, next year?

She's thrilled as you can see.
(And yes, I did just write that on the path with sidewalk chalk, along with the mile markers as I went along.)

Then of course dinner!  I actually took a few pictures this year, amazingly.  Everything tasted delicious and I tried to remember to take a minute to be especially grateful for my kith and kin and foodstuffs.

Interesting groupings!  The Boy loves seeing his cousins, but he especially loves Uncle Matt.

This one is so cute it deserves to be posted all on its own. 

This is just about all The Boy was interested in during Thanksgiving dinner (and of course in a different cup every time).  He will learn.  I put my foot down when it came to the Sprite Zero.

And then we had a quick photoshoot with Cami!

WHAT MY BABIES ARE SO BEAUTIFUL AND YOU TOO WIFE.

Then to round things out with a churchish bookend, I did a musical number of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and decided to callback to Appleton and rock this nice touch of bling, gifted from some of my dear elder buddies as I was heading home some seven (!!!) years ago.

And that's about it.  It's a very nice season, the one in between Halloween and Christmas.

There's so much to be thankful for.

Much Thanks 2012

Last week was Thanksgiving!  It was so great to have a nice long weekend and such funtivities with the family.  To start things off, why not a nice race to work up an appetite for an epic feast?  Amber didn't organize her usual race this year, instead handing over the reins to a young local fellow to put it together for his Eagle project, and for awareness of cancer (a young woman in their neighborhood was recently undergoing some treatment for it, sad).  It was a pretty great turnout, they said about 150-200 between both the 5K and the 1 mile, and Jonny, Melody, Julia, Gabe, Evy, Cami, Jake, Amber, Jillian, Ally and I all participated (Julie stayed home to get started on some delicious foods for later).  It was a fun race and a pretty nice course with just the right amount and length of uphills and downnills.  I started out pretty strong, though there were a gaggle of healthy teenagers ahead of me, but after about half a mile I pulled ahead of them, and there I stayed for the rest of the race!  I totally won!  I wasn't expecting it at all (certain persons who are brothers-in-law usually beat me, but certain persons were pushing strollers, so I took advantage of this opportunity).  It was actually not even quite 3 miles (2.95), and I kind of ran around the parking lot a little farther than the outlined course, crossing the finish line backwards, ha, but I thought that might make it closer to a full 5K, which it didn't really.  But anyway, I finished with a great time (20:48, though I finished out the 3.1 at 21:52, 7:04/mile), and it was fun, and let me just say that, though it may seem petty, there is something kind of satisfying about beating your junior high school bully in a years-later 5K by almost 15 minutes. Vindicated!!!  I have said many times before that if I could run a 7-minute mile in 8th grade, my life just might have turned out differently (which is a silly thing to say, I guess, since if ANYthing had been different than it was in ANYone's life, things might have turned out differently... still).  It was still a pretty validating feeling.*

Jake came in with Melody and Jonny et al. shortly behind.

Julia ran the whole thing!!!  Just kidding, she started running when they reached the parking lot.

Gabe likewise, though it was just far enough to make him start to lose interest about halfway through.

This is what happened when I asked Gabe to smile for the camera.

And then Amber and Cami appeared!  Amber was excited.

And Cami was pretty excited too.

I won!  1st place!  Go me!

This just looked kind of cool.  The tips of the antlers you see on the very bottom belonged to a festive decoration being worn by a minivan.

Then we had dinner!  Twas a feast.  I went home after the race to help The Wife make our contributions, and she even had a sudden inspiration to try a fresh pumpkin pie.  She likes to make the green bean casserole because it MUST be made with the right French-cut variety of green beans, and the yams are always a favorite of hers too.  So when our delicious things were ready we headed up to Mom's house.

Just look how cute she is.

Yams!

Green beans!

Impromptu pumpkin pie!

It was as delicious as always, and the company was great of course.  We played football (yes, even I!), ate way too much dessert, rested and played games, and even had an arts and crafts event with turkeys made of sweets.  Then, to really ring in the season, Mom and I played our infamous annual favorite, Sleigh Ride.

Check out Melody's sweet pass.  I wasn't playing at this point because I was behind the camera.  Props to me for my IT Crowd reference.

I can't remember whose hand is photobombing this picture, but I'm pretty sure it's Katy.  I took another one without, but this one had more character.

Le perfect plate.

Wife likes her pies.

Just because.

I have been known to be something of an artiste, you know.

No Mom, it doesn't sound like the Farley Family Reunion version.  Still, it wasn't our best.

I am ever so thankful for my family, the one I get to see on holidays and other special occasions, and the one I get to come home to afterward.  It was splendid to spend time with everyone, and I'm always so grateful for my beautiful wife, and the knowledge that I have that we will be together forever and always thanks to that most awesome Plan.

Happy Thanksgibing back!

* In his defense, he is reportedly a fairly repentant former bully, so I don't really harbor any grudges or hard feelings, lo, these 15+ years later, but I'll take my victories as they come.

"I didn't realize this was a sad occasion." *

* If you don't know the significance of this phrase, that's okay, just read on, and then go read the entire collected works of Mr. Lemony Snicket.  And if you know the proper response, feel free to leave it in the comments, or send it to me via crow or telegram or coded couplet.

Recently The Wife and I finally were able to re-read Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events in its entirety together.  It took a little longer than we expected (those last few books take a while to plow through), but it was great fun!  And a Vigorously Fulfilling Duty.  I have read them many times, but never all the way through, I don't think, and it was great to both be reading them at the same time so we could have Very Fun Dialogue about them together throughout.  I left lengthy reviews of all of them that can be found on my Goodreads page, so I won't go into that here.  (I also did a drawing that has some Visually Fun Details, which can be found here, with a fair few more on the way.)  But, in celebration of (finally) finishing them, as we sometimes like to do, we decided to have a Baudelaire-themed Very Fancy Dinner, which took place last night.  Some people might wonder what this could possibly include, but there are a lot of Veritable and Fancy and Delicious foods described in the books, which I will now illustrate with photographic evidence providing Veraciously Factual Documentation.

Pasta Puttanesca, Chilled Cucumber Soup, and of course aqueous martinis.

You can tell it's a Very Fancy Dinner because 1) we're eating it at the dining table, and 2) we're using champagne glasses and 3) my pinky is up.

The chef!  (Though I helped peel and grate the cucumbers.)  She's so cute.

 It was so nice and fresh and tasty!  The soup was creamy and cool (though it did require use of the blender--Aunt Josephine must have found a way around using this electrical device), and the pasta sauce was savory and a little spicy and pretty strong.  The "aqueous martinis" tasted just as you might expect they would ("Violet took a sip of her aqueous martini. She was not surprised to find that it tasted like plain water, with a slight hint of olive." -- The Ersatz Elevator), and one glass was just enough, no matter how in they are.  We opted out of trying to find or make parsley sodas.  Afer it all we even had some makeshift peppermints for dessert, though we didn't experience any allergic side-effects.  It was a Victorious Family Denouement to our reading journey.

And this is my best Lemony Snicket impression.

I think Julie's is even better.

Beware of realtors.  Memento Mori.  He who hesitates is lost.  (Or she.)  Have a heart-shaped balloon.