thanksgiving slide show 2010

Thanksgiving morning - these are my white cheddar and sage mashed potatoes ...

And these are my blue cheese and chive mashed potatoes ...

Checklist? Both white potato dishes, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, hot spinach dip, crackers, bakery-bought apple pie, and the all important camera bag ... packed up the car around 11:00 and headed over to my father-in-law's house ...

With 3 sons and their widower father, plus the hometown team (Go Pats!) in the 1:00 Thanksgiving Day game, you don't even need to ask how much of a role football played in the day ...

Meantime, the turkey was baking beautifully, courtesy of my sister-in-law ...

And at last, it was time to feast ...

Followed by our traditional sunset walk ...

Followed by another feast ... this is my other sister-in-law's signature dessert - a pumpkin cheesecake with ginger snap crust ... to die for ...

As darkness fell, so did our triptophan-induced food comas ... another year behind us, another year of happy memories right inside this window ...

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

happy thanksgiving!

We woke up this morning to these wonderful treasures taped up all over the house, courtesy of the littlest ladybug, who had been hard at work at the kitchen table as the sun rose on this bright and brisk morning ...

Happy Thanksgiving, indeed!

cake pops

Ok, so remember that Book Fair book from my last post that my older ladybug came home with ... Cake Pops? The one I called too Martha for me? The one that required specialty ingredients that I've never even heard of? Well, of course, the little ladybug got to browsing over the weekend and decided that we needed to make Turkey cake pops for Thanksgiving:

Yeah right ... sure, kid. I tried desperately to dissuade her - I mean, just look at them ... we'd need to go to a William Sonoma to get the gourmet lollipop sticks, the special candies for the decorations, the edible markers ... I'd have to make fondant frosting for the first time, it was all too much, especially in the face of our actual Thanksgiving preparations. So she quickly redirected her attention to these:

She argued (correctly) that not only did these not call for fondant, but these could be easily modified with non-specialty ingredients ... furthermore, she claimed that Easter baskets would be a fun, colorful, and easy place to start. She's a girl that knows how to get what she wants for sure. So I sighed a big sigh and mentally cleared the next couple of hours in my day ... and we made Easter baskets on the weekend before Thanksgiving.

So here's how it all went down ... ladybug style. As opposed to Martha style. First we used a serrated knife (gentle back and forth "sawing") to cut the tips off of some sugar ice cream cones:

We set the "baskets" aside and started mixing a boxed cake mix:

When the cake was fresh out of the oven and still hot, we scooped out portions of hot cake and firmly packed the baskets full of cake:

While the cake-stuffed baskets were cooling, little bug and and I dyed some coconut flakes by shaking baggies of coconut shavings with just a few drops of food coloring:

We should have poked the "handles" into place during the cake-stuffing process - the cake had already set by the time we tried to poke in the handles and it made things difficult. Licorice would have also made a great handle (easier to poke into place too), but little ladybug insisted on gummy worm handles. At that point, all that was left to do was sprinkle on our coconut flakes and drop on the jelly bean "eggs":

And voila, our finished baskets ...

Little bug was right, the baskets were a very simple place to start - and a great way to ease into a cookbook with such high expectations ... and when we're ready to raise the bar, just look what lies ahead ...

baking, books, and boots ...

As an aside, I have to tell you that catching up is going to be a lot tougher than I thought ... so many things were already lagging behind before the iphoto crisis that the setback has really slammed me ... and with Thanksgiving breathing down my neck, I'm in panic mode at this point. I can actually hear those menacing paper piles laughing at me while my back is turned ...

Should I ignore the whispers and keep on writing? Probably not the most practical prioritization, but yes! After all, I have much to catch up on over here in blogland as well ... I had promised tales of baking and books and boots (oh my!). I'm happy to report that my latest photos have been safely transported over to iphoto, new storage files have been created, I've edited through all the duds, things are rolling again!

****************

First up, the baking ... I've been busy lately, and at the top of my list are Kim's famous mini chocolate chip muffins - they've become a staple over here, we can't get enough! Little ladybug loves to help ...

I highly recommend them - easy, delicious, and a great go-to snack ... 'nuff said! I also have an upcoming soup post for a delicious pumpkin soup made with bacon and leeks - hearty and delicious - stay tuned! Next up is the topic of books ... one of our favorite subjects to share! We've had a book influx lately thanks to the Fall Book Fair at school. My 6th grade ladybug, age 12, selected these three ...

Fun choices, right? Thirteen is like the 2010 version of a Judy Blume page-turner, she literally has tunnel vision as she reads it ... it's the sequel to a previously adored book she read last summer (called, you guessed it, Twelve). The larger book is called Cake Pops and from the looks of it, it's very Martha Stewart with those p.e.r.f.e.c.t. photos of tasty treats ... too bad Martha doesn't live here. But good for her for shooting high ;-) And the book entitled My Best Year is actually my favorite one ... it's sort of like a journal for tweens - it prompts her with questions about things like her thoughts and feelings, her friends, her interests ...

It'll be really fun for her to look back at this book when she's older and I think the self-reflection will be really healthy and helpful in the here and now, too.

My 4th grade ladybug, age 9, chose these titles from the Book Fair ...

Diary of a Wimpy Kid seems to go without saying - kids seem to loooove that series and this one was just released, so it was a hot pick for sure. Shiloh Season is the second in a trilogy about a neglected beagle named Shiloh and the boy who saves him, I'll bet that's a familiar one to most of you. The Tumtum & Nutmeg book is actually another "new release" that she's been dying to get her hands on - the first volume was purchased after reading this post from Cindy at Loving Life's Little Things last summer. The original book was a huge hit with her, she blazed through the pages, and this one seems just as riveting, she gets that same tunnel vision as her sister when she's snuggled up with it. The Penderwicks seems very promising, too, I can't wait to see how that one goes - the story of 4 sisters, their widowed father, and a memorable summer spent together in the country.

Great choices from both ladybugs, right? Well, as luck and fate would have it, look what showed up in the mail for me last Friday, right in the midst of our book fair mania ...

I received this book courtesy of Jen at Denton Sanatorium ... she had a fun giveaway to mark her "blogiversary" and I was one of a few winners ... but the only one to win a copy of her new favorite book, The Swan Thieves, written by Elizabeth Kostova, who also wrote The Historian. It's a historical thriller and I'm really excited to dig in beyond the 10 or so pages I leafed through last weekend to get a taste. I want to publicly thank Jen for this really thoughtful gift - it's much appreciated and will be greatly enjoyed, I'm sure ... lucky as a ladybug, I am!

But the funniest thing about winning Jen's giveaway book was not just the fact that it was a book amidst a very book-themed week around here ... but that when Jen posted the winners, she made mention of a pair of backordered boots that only she knows I've been waiting what seems like an eternity to receive. Ironically, in an even more amazing twist of fate, look what was delivered the very same day as my new book ...

These, my friends, are one of my biggest splurges in literally years ... and I'd do it all over again! Remember that imaginary cued music with Manbug and his Apple products? It's that kind of love ... imagine "So Happy Together" playing as I run in slow motion through a field of wildflowers ... me holding my boots close ... I love - LOVE - these boots! And the boots came into my life solely because of Jen. The same Jen who sent me the book. The book that arrived the same day as the boots. The boots that I waited over 2 months to receive due to a vicious backorder wait time. Of all the days ... they were one in the same. How crazy is that?

Jen had received these boots for her birthday at the end of August and was clearly smitten in her post about them ... when I saw them, I too went starry eyed (cue music again) ... and the timing was perfect, as I had a bit of birthday money myself, just waiting to be spent. Jen was gracious enough to give me the details and then I did something crazy - I ordered them. Something just for me. Imagine that. I blew my birthday money on ... well, me! Worth every minute of that 10-week backorder. Look out bloggers, with these in my wardrobe I might just take the plunge and participate in get my cowgirl on in one of Kim's What I Wore Wednesday series ...

Hope y'all enjoy a real nice weekend, y'hear?!

black cloud

Ever felt like you're having one of these days ...

Well, today was one such day for me ... it was almost laughable. The kind of day where every errand leads to more errands instead of a satisfying check off the ole' list. I had a compressed morning as it was - only 2 hours to spare and a to-do list a mile long. The bad luck started immediately ... grumbling girls, unpacked backpacks, karma was off for sure. I went to the 8am school assembly on the tip that my little ladybug was part of a presentation - but the presentation was rescheduled (20 minutes down the drain). Went to the local smaller grocery store to get bare essentials and save time - store doesn't stock 5 of the 7 items on my list. Went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription - to my shock, it's $135 ... turns out our new plan has a deductible - a deductible that will reset in 6 weeks when the calendar year changes. Went to the bank to drop off mortgage refinancing paperwork - went to the wrong branch. Did I mention that it was also pouring rain with piping wind gusts this morning? It definitely added to the drama ...

So after driving to the correct branch, and thus getting one errand checked off my list, I came home to do things like call the insurance company to get to the bottom of the $135 charge and catch up on my volunteer work that's starting to slip behind schedule. Better to be safely at home than behind the wheel if my day was going in that direction, right? But when I went to pull the trash barrels and recycling bins out to the curb, I noticed that the trucks had already come. Six hours early. Really? Was there no end to the road blocks today? At that point, I was definitely tangled up in knots - frustrated, rain-soaked, and defeated.

Until I came inside, dried off, and sat down to reply to emails ... a new email had come in from a good friend - a high school friend who had not come to our recent reunion. I've had trouble connecting with her at length to find out the reason, she had been vague at the time and I had a feeling something more was up. Turns out she's having a lot more than just a bad morning ... her husband has cancer and their "dream house" (bought just 4 years ago with dreams of restoration and renovation) has turned into a money pit. They're now trying to sell the house for a considerable loss and her husband, though he has beaten the cancer, has fallen into depression - to the point where she couldn't leave to join us at the reunion.

Can you say reality check? Sure made me forget about the laughable drama I had experienced on one rainswept and down-on-my-luck morning. Mantra for the day ... Recognize your blessings and stop stressing ...

pardon us while we interrupt this blog ...

Anyone else a Mac user out there? My Manbug is a full on computer junkie - more like a computer whisperer - he understands them completely, speaks their language, understands all their codes and inner workings. Shouldn't we all be so lucky to have 24/7 technical support in the house! So after Windows kept failing him over and over again like a bad girlfriend, he left it all behind and went over to Apple about 3 years ago ... and he's never once looked back ... if I could cue the music of the 1967 song "So Happy Together" and have video of my Manbug running in slow motion hand in hand with an Apple logo through a field of flowers, that would sum up the perfect union between them. They've been a match made in heaven ...

... until he ran an iphoto update about 2 weeks ago. Uh oh - trouble in paradise. His first harsh words about Apple in their entire 3-year romance.

At first the upgrade seemed fine, but soon we noticed new photos were disappearing. After hours (and hours) of troubleshooting and rebuilding, it turns out that Apple had changed the permissions settings for the "shared file" location where we stored our photos. Bottom line: new photos and edits (post-upgrade) were not able to be saved and simply vanished once you closed the program. So poor Manbug spent the better part of this last weekend at the computer backing up a 10-year total of about 18,000 digital photos in our iphoto library and then transferring them to a new storage location on the computer. One with the right permission settings.

Painless process? Nope. In fact, the whole library vanished during the transfer. All 18,000 photos. A complete wipeout. But Manbug kept his cool because, being the computer whisperer that he is, he had backed up a duplicate library into some sort of external system before he started the transfer. But it took a whole lot of time to rebuild from scratch. Quiet time. Like don't interrupt him and let him focus on the job kind of time. But at the end of the weekend, everything was fully restored and we were up and running again ... and Manbug was our resident hero ...

Huzzah!

So now that life is back to normal after our technical difficulties, tomorrow I will begin playing catch up. As in - catching up with bills and emails and those dreaded paper piles of mine ... but on the bright side, I'll also catch up with the 150+ photos that have been backlogged on my camera card. Photos with stories. So many random stories from the last 2 weekends while we were frozen in iphoto limbo ... stories of Baking and Books and Boots - oh my! Can't wait to share ...

norman rockwell and me ...

Jen at Denton Sanatorium was hosting another link-up party yesterday ... you'll notice I'm a day late and a dollar short - perpetually. Anyhoo ... Jen was the one who a couple of weeks ago had inspired her readers to participate in a "real life" challenge to expose the reality of our day-to-day lives rather than the edited and polished images we tend to publish instead. That post was a whole lot of fun for me - and very cathartic - I laughed out loud as I peeked into the similar realities of my bloggy pals ... great therapy ;)

This time the subject is the evolution of our families - the backstory of how they came to be. Definitely a deeper kind of therapy with this topic. Jen's own post about her amazing journey to becoming the mother of seven incredible children is so honest and inspiring ... in short, she amazes me. Other bloggy friends, too, have opened up to reveal some very personal stories - I've welled up with tears this time around - clearly a loaded topic.

You'd think this would be an easy one for me - my family is so simple - just 2 girls and a Manbug ... heck, we don't even have any pets! But, simple or not, this topic is a loaded one for me as well ... I myself come from a very complex and fragmented family tree ... it's filled with half-siblings, step-siblings, 2nd cousins twice removed, and everything in between. Death, divorce, remarriage, children born with every union ... my tree is a mess! My mother's mother was married an astonishing four times (bold for a woman born in 1919) and had 2 girls by separate husbands ... and years later, my own father was married 3 times ... with children each step of the way - 8 in all (5 biological and 3 stepchildren). To say I had a complicated childhood doesn't even begin to cover it ...

As a child, my family tree was a source of embarrassment and anxiety for me ... I felt a bit like a circus side show and vowed to stop the insanity - as a young girl, I daydreamed incessantly about growing up and getting my big chance at a fresh start ...

One ticket for a perfect Norman Rockwell future, please! Well, after a few misses, I found my Norman Rockwell boy when I was 25 - and by 27 we were married, when he was a budding marketing genius and I was an energetic and starry-eyed middle school teacher. Right away, we bought a charming little fixer-upper in his hometown and about 3 years later we started our family - Rockwell indeed.

We had our beautiful first-born on a hot July day in 1998 ... an easy birth, free of drama and complications. Likewise, she had been easily and quickly conceived, right according to plan ... and the entire pregnancy was one of those glowing amazing periods where my skin had never been clearer, my nails had never been stronger, and my hair had never been shinier ... I literally radiated with joy and good health and I loved - LOVED - every single minute of it. And I couldn't have been any happier when I was a new mother to that precious baby - the mommy and me classes, the long walks pushing her stroller, the breastfeeding, the adorable baby clothes, we traveled back and forth to see my family easily and often ... I couldn't get enough of it all ... my life was exactly the Norman Rockwell portrait I had dreamed it to be ...

But the Rockwell image began to fade when it wasn't as easy to conceive the next time around. I was a control freak who was in the process of putting together her perfect lifelong plan - I had gotten everything I wanted up until that point, so when it took a full year (seemed more like an eternity) to conceive our next baby it became a very stressful experience. Then once we finally conceived, my pregnancy was a difficult one. I was exhausted and sick the whole way through, the opposite of the radiant mother-to-be I had been just 3 years earlier. By the third trimester, I was begging to get it over with and on a beautiful June day in 2001, I got my wish and our second little ladybug came into our lives.

But the roller coaster ride of 2000 and 2001 was an important reality check for us after our picture perfect early days. Because it turns out that despite our best efforts, there are things in life you actually can't control. We had gone from a perfect Norman Rockwell portrait to this:

Did I mention we also moved during that time - that alone was enough to kill us, we lost 2 dream houses in a competitive housing market and then nearly lost the buyer to the home we were selling in the post-9/11 fallout ... and, of course, there was the trauma of 9/11 itself too. And, oh yeah, the new baby had difficulty nursing and was colicky - like crazy colicky. Mind numbing, lose your marbles colicky. For my husband, this series of beyond-our-control reality checks was enough for him to cash in - he wanted to quit growing our family while we were ahead - 2 healthy kids, a huge new mortgage, college funds ... he was feeling the noose for sure. Manbug is nothing if not practical - he had rationalized his decision and it was final. Two kids was his comfort limit.

But I would have none of it. I was a hot hormonal mess and pined, literally pined, for just one more. I loved the sisters that my girls were becoming and was so envious of their amazing bond - they were ying and yang, fric and frac, sugar and spice ... they had something I had never known myself - my goodness, the Norman Rockwell image was coming back together - that's the family I had been daydreaming about throughout my entire youth! So naturally they deserved to have more siblings, right?! I tried everything in my power to convince the Manbug, but he was not to be moved. Patience, I thought. Patience. I will have a third.

In 2002, we had a close local friend, also a father with young children, diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and by 2003, he was gone at just 33. Throughout his illness, and throughout his life before that too, this friend embraced a real Carpe Diem attitude, and he fought an amazing fight with the most incredible attitude. For me, the experience of losing him was gasoline on the fire ... why live your life worried and overly practical? Let's try for that 3rd baby! Carpe Diem indeed! But Manbug was still not to be moved. He saw our dear friend's death as the ultimate reality check on why to stick with two. Patience, I thought. Patience. I will have that third.

At that point, I became obsessed with the idea of three ... my Rockwell vision would not be complete without it. It became so real to me - I envisioned another girl, I could see her in future family photos, smiling away with her doting big sisters. It felt so right to me. So real. I even had her named, and I was carefully saving and labeling all of our baby gear and clothing for her ... in my mind, it was a done deal. Surely it would happen eventually. Right?

Nope. Having a small and manageable family of two was a comfort level that I was never able to shake the Manbug out of and a third baby never came to be. I cried and cried the day we passed along our crib to another family ... the gear, the clothing, eventually it all went off in different directions. Letting go of the "stuff" also meant letting go of the dream for my beautiful third daughter whose name I still hold dear. An imaginary daughter I had never even conceived let alone held in my arms ... and yet there I was crying for her, almost mourning her as I let go of the dream.

It's been 5 1/2 years since that day and my life as the mother of two has been so blessed. Our girls are growing up to be incredible people with their own unique voices and talents. I love them more than words could ever say. My life is definitely not as perfect as in those blissful newlywed/new mom days ... the roller coaster ride of life with children has been colorful to say the least (see aforementioned reality post). I must confess that families with 3 girls still seem to catch my attention, and I admit that I still wonder "what if?" from time to time - but I have to believe that this is where I was meant to be. And I know deep down in my heart that I have been blessed beyond measure, right down to that simple family tree I always wanted ... 2 beautiful and healthy ladybugs who are as thick as thieves and their wonderful and loving Manbug dad. Turns out this is my Norman Rockwell after all.

soup nazi ...

Over the course of my years here in frosty New England, I've really become a fan of homemade soups to get me through the cold cold months. There's nothing better than a wintry football Sunday where we're all tucked into the house and it's filled with the aroma of a slow-cooking soup simmering away. What's not to love? It's comfort food at it's best and one Sunday's yield can feed us all week long. The newest soup in my recipe collection is a potato-cauliflower-cheese soup that is absolutely delicious! Smooth and creamy, quick and easy, this one's a keeper!

First of all, you only need a handful of easy everyday ingredients - my kind of recipe already!

An onion, a baking potato, one head of cauliflower, 1-2 tablespoons of either butter or oil, 4 cups of chicken stock (vegetable stock is a great substitute too), 1-2 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and 1 cup of cream (depending on preference, you could also substitute milk). Start by heating up your stock pot and dicing up your potato and onion ...

... then melt the butter (or oil) in the pot and add the diced pieces - gently soften/sauté them for about 10 minutes. At the same time, chop the cauliflower into florets - add them into the pot next, along with the chicken stock ...

Bring it to a gentle boil and simmer for about 15+ minutes, until everything in the pot is really soft. At this point, one of these handy tools is your new best friend to purée it all together in a matter of seconds ...

All you have to do is just submerge it into the mixture and the blade whips it into a smooth mix (looks kind of like cream of wheat). At that point, you pour in the cream and toss in the cheese ...

Just stir it all together until the cheese is melted and and it's ready to serve ... I added a sprinkling of cheese in the center of my bowl for a little visual interest ... but no matter what it looks like, it's sooooo delicious, especially with warm bread!

The amounts that I used with this batch could easily feed 8+ ... and around here that that's a few days supply ... easy to reheat too - just warm it in the microwave with a little extra milk mixed in. If you're like me and love the low effort and big payoff of a hearty soup, this one's really worth a try ...

Bon appetit!!

america's got talent!

Did anyone follow this show throughout the summer? The ladybugs and I did - very enthusiastically. So when I found out after the season ended that the top 10 were going on an "AGT Live Tour", I was all-in ... I wish I had video footage of the moment I told them about our tickets, the littlest ladybug in particular just about had a seizure - the screams of delight were deafening - in that moment, I was the best mom ever. Hey, I take it where I can!

Well, after 2 months of waiting, the show finally arrived in Boston last night for its one and only night here ... big deviation from our usual school night routine! We arrived around 6:20 for what I thought was a 7:00 show ... turned out to be 7:30, so we waited in a line for quite a while and chatted with the other fans in the lobby of Boston's beautiful Wang Theater.

We finally got to our seats around 7:00 and the show finally started around 7:40 ... yikes, bedtime for my 9 year old ladybug is usually 8:00!

The show opened with Christina and Ali, a singing sister act who were big audience favorites throughout the show - they have cystic fibrosis and lost a sister last year to the disease ... the little sister, Christina, is particularly amazing since she's only 13 (Ali is 20) ...

The next act was Anna and Patryk - amaaaaazing 12 year old ballroom dancers - man, can those kids ever dance, they were really something ...

Taylor Mathews followed them, I think - he's that really adorable 19 year old singer who was known for how humble and nervous he was throughout the summer show - he was really good ...

Next came the magic act, Michael Grasso ... he did 3 mini acts all in a row - the first was slight of hand stuff (we sat way to far away to see it), the next was a disappearing lady in a box trick ... first she disappeared, then she came back, but with another lady too. Pretty cool, but the last trick was really incredible - he locked a lady in a small clear raised box, stood next to it, then lifted a hand held curtain in front of them and in the very next instant they had switched places - that was crazy - like Krazy crazy ...

Prince Poppycock was a big fan favorite throughout the show, so of course he did a larger-than-life flamboyant over-the-top act for us (to huge audience applause) ...

And as if that didn't get the audience going enough, next came this pint sized superstar ...

10 year old opera singer Jackie Evancho was absolutely incredible ... what a voice! They may have overplayed the fact that she's just a kid a bit too much (she stood on a box in front of the mic, she wore a fluffy white dress, she skipped as she left the stage, etc) - but there's no denying she has an amazing gift with that voice of hers ...

The bright stage lights swallowed her up in this iphone video clip of mine, but the audio is in tact - isn't she incredible? And the producers know it for sure - she sang at several different points throughout last night's show. I hope she's gonna take a long break out of the spotlight once this tour is over, she's so young ... the mother lion in me wants to make sure she doesn't end up the next Lindsay Lohan :-(

After Jackie came the big act for us - our absolute runaway favorite throughout the show last summer (and our main reason for being there) - Fighting Gravity ... see for yourself if you haven't already:

They were absolutely incredible and had people clapping and shouting before it had even ended - including us. The bugs and I were really sad that they never came back for another act afterwards because they really stole the show. AMAZING. A couple of the singers came back afterwards, Anna & Patryk did a second (and even more incredible) dance act, the bike kid (Jeremy VanSchoonhoven) did a few cool tricks (but not many since he had broken his hand about 4 weeks ago) ...

And another great act that they waited far too long to bring out was Studio One, a group of amazing acrobatic street dancers ranging in age from 10 - 22 ...

They were also big crowd-pleasers, we loved them!! But it was about 9:40 by the time Studio One finished up and my thoughts turned to leaving - lord knows, we were already way past our bedtime! Unfortunately, that's when they brought out the big million dollar winner, Michael Grimm ... he's a very talented singer (sounds a lot like Joe Cocker), but man did they ever keep him onstage too long ... and of course the shameless promotion of his upcoming Vegas Act was starting to try my patience ... so by the time we were actually walking out of the theater (with over 3,000 other people) it was past 10:00 and even my enthusiastic curfew-breaking ladybugs were ready to call it quits. We got home just in time for an 11 pm bedtime ... they were hanging their head low at the breakfast table this morning for sure! Today's gonna be an awfully difficult day at school for them, but I think it was worth it ... it's ok to break the rules every now and again, isn't it?!