Happy Thanksgiving! We had ours tonight (Wednesday)
as is our usual custom, and then our van went kablooie on the way home,
which has also been our usual custom as of late. Blurg! Our half an
hour return trip became an hour and a half return trip requiring a mere
two stops to the side of the road to let the car cool down. We are now
in the process of making up a new “I hate cars” song.

Thanksgiving was great. My BIL deep fried a turkey, as is his usual custom, and this year it was butterbeer and garlic (he was apparently feeling Harry Potter-ish). Sounds weird; tastes awesome. Deep fried turkey is extremely moist, and it is definitely the best way to cook a bird.

So I got home tonight (finally) and checked my
inbox to discover an email from Gymboree. Apparently calendar-reading
is not one of their strong suits over there. They have started their
Black Friday sale already! Since this is technically Wednesday night or
Thursday morning depending on where you live, I don’t know what they’re
doing, but I’m going to go buy coats for my kids for next year as soon
as I’m done with this . $14 each! Plus I got a 20% off coupon in
the mail the other day, which makes these coats closer to $11 instead of say, $40. Yay!!!

Then I shall sleep because tomorrow I have to
conquer the stupid couch o’ clean clothes before I trek to the outlet
mall at midnight (or 11:00 since that’s when our crazy outlet opens)
for the $4.50 gymmies. I love Black Friday! I should just save up all
my money and only buy clothes on that day. Happy Thanksgiving (again)!

Rachel

This post has nothing whatsoever to do with vampirism. I just like the title and I’m reeeeally tired so the ol’ brain isn’t working too swiftly. Actually, that doesn’t even makes sense. How would vampirism bite you back? Vampires are the ones that bit you in the first place. “People bite back” just sounds silly.

Have you seen the trailers for the new Twilight movie? Is it just me or does that just look stupid? And another thing, why in the world would some vampire guy who is hundreds of years old be interested in a teenage girl? I remember being a teenage girl. I remember the teenage girls around me at the time. I have eyeballs and see teenage girls around me.

Teenage girls as a group are quite possibly the silliest creatures on the planet outside of say, baby kangaroos, which have the advantage of being small and adorable. Wouldn’t a several hundred year old man be interested in someone with a modicum of wisdom floating around the skull cavity?

Even Buffy, which is one of my all time favorite TV shows, has two hundreds of years old vampires dating her at various points in the series. Oh wait, she’s a slayer and has all the responsibility that that entails helping her mature quickly. Phew! Rationalization complete. Now I can enjoy my show without stupid niggling questions. Plus, how can you complain when the two vamps in question are these guys?

I mean really, who has cheekbones like Spike there at the top? Ridiculous! And if you are a big Bones fan, you should go watch the first season of Buffy before David Boreanaz’s face matured. Looks totally different.

Hmmmm, so apparently this post is actually all about vampires. Did I mention I am tired and have nothing to say. This is pretty representative on Rachel’s brain on not much sleep. So sad.

Rachel

Hey, guess what? Only six weeks left until Christmas. The panicking all at once may commence now. But not for me! I have got my Christmas gifts spreadsheet all up to date and am working on gift ideas and things, organized my calendar, and am hoping to sit down and write up a December meal plan so I don’t have to think about food next month. Yay! Feel free to hate me (or email me and I’ll send you copies of my spreadsheet, calendar, and meal plan once I get them finished off).

Every year at this time, my card group buddies and I head off to the beach for a weekend of Dutch Blitz, Christmas (or otherwise) shopping at the Outlet Mall down there, and general hanging around with no non-nursing children or Hubbies, who get to stay home and watch assorted children. I love coming home and hearing how their weekend has gone. George does such a good job with them.

We’ve gone I think four years in a row now and I have yet to make it without being either pregnant or bringing a baby. Oh well. Henry’s pretty nice, so he should be fine except for the whole getting teeth in and being extra fussy lately. Oh the joy!

The girls and I have been playing Dutch Blitz for six years or so now, I think. So nice to have a group of women over every other week to eat lots of junk food with, listen to Beatles music or Abba if somehow my SIL Masha manages to get control over the CD player, and yell at other people when they win. Nice stress reliever.

Hey, you know that would make a good stocking stuffer or present. Hang on while I go put that on my spreadsheet for Trinity (my kids better not be surreptitiously reading this). Here’s a picture of it on Amazon (wonder of the modern world) and a link to it:

The game is a speed game sort of like multi-player solitare. I grew up playing double sol with my parents and always rather liked that. Think that’s about it around here. Been busy thinking about Christmas prep and doing things like chopping up and freezing bell peppers (18 of them!), pressure canning soup and chili, and jarring up dry ingredients for pancakes, baked oatmeal, bran pan, corn bread, and other breakfasty stuff. I’ve been feeling rather productive lately, I must say. Might as well make good use of that before it goes away.

Rachel

Friday night for Halloween we went to our church’s annual Reformation Night party (did you know that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg Castle Church on October 31, 1517? This, of course, was the spark for the Protestant Reformation). The party always involves booths with games and things that involve a rather large amount of candy being transferred to my childrens’ bags. This year they seemed to come home with sort of an extra lot of loot.

Saturday morning my son greeted me with a smile and a piece of paper that he had “forgotten” to give me on Friday which explained how he and the girls (older two) were planning to stay up all night eating candy on Reformation Day 2008 (as opposed any other visiting ones that might not be in 2008 I guess). Apparently he and Trinity had actually done this. Anika, being somewhat wiser, did not eat candy all night and instead spent her wee hours actually sleeping.

Yes, I would have preferred to have received this information on Friday; but alas, by Saturday our only options were let them run around like maniacs on horrific sugar highs all day or lull them into a stupor by letting them watch TV all day and hoping they got tummyaches (such good parenting). By the time you have six children, the answer to any question is “whichever one makes less noise.” We opted for the latter choice.

George told them in the morning that they should quit eating candy, which of course they declined to do. Normally we would have straightened that out, but eating disgusting amounts of candy at once tends to be a self-correcting problem and this way hopefully they would remember the lesson next year.

By Sunday morning Trinity was complaining that her stomach hurt. Off and on all morning she didn’t feel well and by the time we got to church she was starting to cry in that “I’m going to throw up within five seconds” kind of way. George grabbed the closest thing he could for her to barf into, which turned out to be….. the box of remaining candy Georgie was bringing over to his friend’s house. I’m just glad it wasn’t my purse.

So Trinity will probably not make this mistake next year. Somehow I don’t think we’ve seen the end of this from Georgie though. Maybe he’ll be like my brother who once ate twelve roasted marshmallows in a row and promptly returned them on the other side of our grandparents’ Winnebago. He didn’t eat marshmallows again for years. Actually, I’m not sure he eats them now. Hehe.

Hope you had a lovely Halloween that did not involve unidentifiable stomach contents hurling your way!

Rachel