Snow on the range

Yesterday, Chuy helped me decorate our tree. He had fun playing w/ the lights, but almost chewed them up, like the cat in National Lampoon's Christmas vacation who got electrocuted, and that was not a pretty site. Anyway, these lights all worked, unlike the other 2 strands we had, so our tree looks very festive. It's not finished yet, but it has white lights and gold and silver ribbons on it. It smells so fresh too. And boy do those Scotch Pines drink a lot of water! Whoever said they'd drink as much in the first 24 hours as in the next week was right. I poured another 2 quarts into the bowl not even 2 days later.

Woke up to some dusting of snow this morning at 29 degrees, but it's supposed to warm to 37 later today. I think I'm ready for this snowy season, but I'd like us to find our box of hats and scarves soon! I've resorted to wearing some of Greg's collectible soccer scarves instead because those are the only ones I can find. And to think, winter isn't officially here until December 21st.

We're looking forward to this month filled with parties, babysitting, and singing gigs for Greg's Quartet, the AKAfellas. It's always fun for me to hear them sing. They're recording again tonight. My favorite song that they sing is Rich Mullins' "Screen door (on a submarine)." Their next "gig" is at the Christmas party at the retirement home of my friend, Wilma, on Dec. 11th. It'll be fun to see how that audience likes their harmony.

Turkey smoked, fried, or roasted?

It was a happy time at the Bayman household this past weekend. Our guests, the Townsends, arrived in the early afternoon, out of the blistering cold. After a delicious dinner, we tried to stay awake on the couch, sitting by the fireplace listening to the crackling of the fire, watching the Cowboys and the Broncos tie it up TD after TD. Our guests were for rooting Denver, and of course we're for Dallas, so the bet was, the fans of the winning team got to pick the game we'd play, as soon as we woke up from our food coma. So Denver won in OT and the game of choice was Mexican Train.

Now, everyone in the house had played Dominos before, but I was the only one who hadn't played Mexican Train. If you haven't played before, it's like "chicken feet" but you have a public or "Mexican train" and a private or "personal" train. The object of the game is to get rid of all your dominos first of course, but if you can do your private train, don't put them all in the Mexican train. I made that mistake once. The Townsends wanted to train me (excuse the pun) and get me ready for the game night at their house on Friday, where the Mexican Train gurus would be saying "You didn't say Uno! Draw 2!". So we played and played, and everyone won but me. That was fine, but now I wanna win!

Our puppy, Chuy, was very good at not bothering the game, though he loved to bother the Townsends' 15 week old baby Nia, who was minding her own business sleeping in her carrier. Fortunately, Nia didn't wake up when Chuy pulled off her blanket and rocked her bed with his paw. I guess he didn't understand that like puppies, babies need to sleep a lot too. She woke up just in time to play the last round of Mexican train and her mother won the game. We old people called it a night at 10:30 so the Townsends could wake up at 04:45 on Friday morning for their first time to experience the busiest shopping day of the year. Greg and I caught some extra sleep instead.

On Friday night at the Townsends, we saw that these people love to eat! For 10 adults, they had not one but two turkeys, and not just roasted, but fried and hickory smoked! Their other guests brought all of the rest of the food, so Greg and I got to eat and enjoy! Boy was it good! The turkeys were both charred and blackened, but juicy and tender on the inside. My favorite was the smoked. And those dinner rolls... mmm, mmm, mmm, you wouldn't have had better rolls at O'Charley's. ;)

No Mexican train that night. Right after dinner, the newly engaged and the newly pregnant couples had to head home and the mothers had to nurse, so I watched Cinderella w/ the mom's and the baby girls as they nursed and Greg and the dad's talked downstairs about child rearing. Overall, it was a fun night and great thanksgiving.

Saturday was time to rest, relax, and shop. :) We looked for decorations for our future Christmas tree, and I couldn't decide between blue and silver, red and gold, or gold and silver decorations, so we'll see what after Christmas decorations we can find at good prices. We decorated our 4' artificial tree w/ red white and green lights and put it in the den. It's cute, and it fits well in the den for now. It's the first tree we had since we were married, so we had to keep it for this first Christmas in our new home.

The third thanksgiving feast of the weekend was in Sunday School. There was SO much food, we didn't know what to do with all of it. I was worried that the corn bread muffins we brought wouldn't be enough, but there was so much extra food to go around. I didn't even sample everything. I couldn't. There was so much sweet stuff, breakfast stuff and what a good time of fellowship. We did a "popcorn" session of "What am I thankful for?" and it was touching to hear from so many people.

After church, we met our friends Paul & Leslie to go Christmas Tree Hunting! We went out to Piney Acres in Fortville, IN to cutdown our tree. :) We found the perfect 6' Scotch Pine right away, but kept looking with Paul & Leslie to find their perfect tree. Ours had a bird's nest in it, but Greg took it right out. Fortunately it was empty, so there weren't any eggs or birds who'd be missing their home. We got a great deal and took the tree home to display by our fireplace. We were a bit worried that Chuy would love to chew the lower branches, but he wasn't very interested in the tree at all. Thank goodness, because those needles could really harm a pup.

We haven't decorated it yet, but after all the furniture rearranging and decoration adjustments, our house is in quite a disarray. Hopefully we can get it the way we want it soon. Can't wait to decorate our real tree and have friends and family over for Christmas.

I'm glad that Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's are so close together. It's the season of celebration, rememberance, fellowship, and festivity. Hope you keep or start some traditions of your own.

Holidays

Oh, the smell of wood burning in the fireplace. It reminds me of winter and families gathering together to spend time with ones they love.

The first snow fell today and our puppy hadn't seen it before in his short 3 months on this earth. I think he likes it though his paws get cold quickly.

We're looking forward to our first thanksgiving with friends in our new home. This year will be the first family Christmas photo in front of the fireplace. Oh, how I wish that our family could join us this thanksgiving, but we understand that miles may sometimes keep us apart. Looking forward to seeing most of them at Christmas.

This year, we'll be cooking turkey for guests for the first time. Last year, we opened our wedding gifts just before making Thanksgiving dinner. It was experimental for both of us.

Our Thanksgiving Menu 2005:

Roasted Turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce

Green Bean casserole

Scalloped Potatoes

Whole Kernel Corn

Spinach Salad

Crescent Rolls

Pumpkin Pie with whipped cream

Pumpkin Cheesecake with whipped cream and pecans

Crangrape juice

Sparkling Apple Cider

(coffee, tea, coke, diet coke, pepsi, and water are also available)

We're gonna watch the Cowboys play while we enter our food coma. After the triptophan wears off, we'll probably eat leftovers.

Hope y'all have a Happy Thanksgiving.