Two Thanksgivings

Life and family have been remarkably busy this last few weeks. Best of all, we had Thanksgiving. I have got to give my sister-in-law props because she hosted two Thanksgiving dinners for us (one was unintentional). My folks came up from Olympia, WA where they live and stayed with us for the long weekend. Boy were my kids so happy about that. They love their grandparents in such a sweet and all-consuming way. 

We ended up having two Thanksgivings because of a turkey fiasco. Growing up Seventh Day Adventist, neither my-sister-in-law or I have ever cooked a turkey in its entirety. For future reference, it takes a while. Like, a day plus. When Cheriss (sis-in-law) won a 22.7 pound turkey at work, she figured it was like a chicken to cook, only maybe a bit larger. So, she started to cook the bird 3 hours before we all arrived.

Needless to say, my Dad and I ended up with the Thanksgiving turkey in my garage, brining it at 10 p.m. at night for a full 24 hour brine, before we ended up with 22 pounds of meat that needed to be eaten. Thus, the second Thanksgiving. In between the garage brine and the eating though, the turkey did take a wild ride in the back of a car, in a garbage can, full of brine, held precariously in my sister-in-law’s tight embrace to get home to her house for the cooking process.

We had some really good laughs about the entire turkey debacle and everyone declared that the turkey was the best they had ever had in their life.

The kids loved Thanksgiving and had such a fun time. We even took in a gingerbread house contest for our holiday weekend. Lily, like all toddlers, is quite particular in her clothing choices and has literally never willingly put on a dress in her life. For some random reason, she decided to wear a princess dress. We were so surprised to see that the gingerbread house contest had a trio of princesses there, too.

Another thing that’s been adding to the schedule of craziness is a trip to D.C. that I took on behalf of COHE (Coalition of Handcrafted Entrepreneurs) this week. I met with stakeholders, primarily on the Senate side that have jurisdiction on any legislation relating to cosmetics. If you want to be updated on the legislative framework and where any cosmetics FDA legislation might be moving, please join COHE. Joining is free. The kiddos were fine when I was gone, mostly because the Elf on the Shelf has arrived, but it was great to see them again when I got back.