A lot of a lots

I have been away from my computer for most of the past week due to the fact that I was cooking. A lot. And had a houseful of company. A lot. And my daughters were home and we needed to talk. A lot. And laugh. A lot. And today I am feeling slightly overwhelmed by all the words in my brain so I'm just going to dive right in and leave a few here.

Thanksgiving. Lovely. Filled with family and food and my sweet daughters and two little nephews who we loved having in the house.

Oh and fyi- little boys are completely different than little girls and I'm not talking about just the obvious here. Little boys can make all things silly. And little girls can talk. Boy can they ever talk! After dinner one night we sat around the table and my two daughters were telling stories about this and that and I wish you could have seen my nephews faces. I should probably add here that my girls talk reallyreallyreallyfast and they were telling these stories in a sort of tag team fashion and those little boys were completely mesmerized. Not so much with the content but more with the speed and all the words and the animation on my daughters faces. They sat absolutely frozen in their seats looking from one girl cousin to the other...kind of like a tennis match. They were trying their best to follow what the girls were saying but it was pretty much futile. My husband says they shouldn't worry though...that's how he feels most nights at the dinner table when the girls and I get to talking.

We were really hoping to have some wildlife in the yard to show the boys while they were here but I think the forest animals knew this was a holiday in which to lay low. Of course just a few hours after everyone took off we glanced out back to see 8 wild turkeys.

I suppose they knew we'd had our fill of bird on Thursday and Friday and that it was safe to come out. On Sunday morning we awoke to deer in the yard...four of them. Maybe they were with family for the holiday too and are just now getting back home. They are beautiful, particularly the bucks, and I did take a couple of photos but they were thru the window and the glare is bad so I'm not posting. I can't step outside to get their picture anymore as they freak when they see me raise my hand to my eye. I've tried telling them its just a camera but they're not taking any chances.

After all the company left on Saturday we went to see The Blindside. If you haven't seen this movie get yourself to a theatre...such a heartwarming story about love in action and how that impacts a life. Oh, and take some kleenex because you'll need it. And of course after a good cry you need food so we stopped at a favorite pizza place on the way home. Ahh....pizza...it's the anti-turkey.

The girls were headed back to uni on Sunday but before they left for the airport we did pull out the Christmas decorations and had a little tree trimming party complete with eggnog. We drink our eggnog in our German Christmas market mugs because that makes us happy. It was fun to pull out all the decorations this year. When we moved to the UK we only took about half of our Christmas boxes with us and the rest went to storage so a lot of the items we hadn't seen in several years. I have lots of Snow Village pieces and none of them came with us to the UK since the electrical current there is scary and is also the reason why there are no outlets in the bathrooms. The plus side is water boils instantly in the electric kettles there. Ooops-tangent. Told you...words...I have a lot of them.

Anyway, when we decorate our Christmas tree every year it is tradition that hubs hides the pickle ornament and the girls have to find it hidden in one of the Christmas trees. Except of course my husband gave up years ago putting it in the tree and now they pretty much have to look all over the house to find it. Hiding a pickle ornament is supposedly a German tradition that says whoever finds the pickle will get an extra treat from St. Nick. This is perhaps more of a myth since the Germans I know have never heard of it but its still fun.

This year hubs left the pickle in a really obvious spot and the girls walked by it a couple of times before daughter1 finally noticed it hanging on the clock case. Whoever finds it hangs it somewhere on the tree...not sure they view that as an 'extra treat' but that's all I got.

I can't finish this Thanksgiving post without a brief mention of the angel pie. Firstly, these cuties baked the pies this year.

Let's just take a moment here.

If you are thinking that it looks like scrumptious custardy wonderfulness then you would be correct. Several people asked me last week for the recipe after I mentioned it in a post and I fully intended to publish it right here on the blog because I'm nice like that. However.... my sister in law was here and she threatened to have her husband hack into my blog and remove it if I dared and my brother in law is a bit of a computer whiz so I'm thinking I best not. I am on email though, wink wink.

Whew. Like I said...a lot of words. I feel better now so thank you.