Thanksgiving

I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was as blessed as mine was. This year due to a couple turn of events we decided to host Thanksgiving at our house and I volunteered to make my first Thanksgiving meal as an adult.

I started Wednesday night preparing cheesecakes and other goodies. Then Thursday I got started with Tank the Turkey after I gave him a spa bath, butter massage, salt and pepper rub I popped him into the sauna. I went to set the timer and realized he was in over an hour early yikes I pulled the pan back out, did you know a pan can get to nearly burning hot in less then a minute OUCH! Finally at the right time I popped Tank into the sauna to steam for an hour, then out to rest for 20 minutes while I changed temperatures then back into the sauna. When he was done I LET HIM REST AGAIN FOR THE FINAL NAP OF HIS LIFETIME. Tank was a very handsome bird, and tasty too!
While preparing meals I had the lap top out to help with a few pressing questions like "Which red blob is the liver I am supposed to throw out?" "Which herb is in my hand?" a friend gave me two and I was not positive which was which. "How hot is a turkey when it is done?" Thank goodness for my friend Google who helped me with everything! About an hour before dinner my wonderful sister and brother in-law came over and helped set the food out pretty, Tom was good for getting the high stuff out of the cabinets. When Dad arrived I finally confessed that I had no idea how to carve my pretty bird and he set to work. Thanks Daddy! My hubby was very helpful throughout the day and most importantly I left the camera out and he took tons of pictures to preserve my memories!

I love this picture of my daddy and I working together in the kitchen.
Finally it was time for everyone to dig in. We decided to do a buffet since our table was not big enough to hold the food. It was fabulous to have enough counter space for this to be an option.
After a wonderful dinner of food, and conversations The Hood's and Max cleaned the kitchen!!! Even Sydney helped out by drying spoons. It was nice to sit back and watch the mess disappear.


I loved having a small thanks giving this year with my parents, the Hood's (Chrissy Sydney, and Tom), Max and I, and my wonderful Auntie Pattie who lives in CA this is the first time in 46 years she did not cook the meal. My brother Billy was missed but we will see him Tomorrow when he comes home for a few days before leaving for work in Dubai again. My mom and Aunt were so cute they dressed in matching outfits.
After dinner we had a family porker tournament I was out the second hand Tom out played me! It was a very aggressive game with lots of bidding and came down to My Dad and Max. Max won in the end.

After my parent left for the evening Max and Tom went back to their Tiger Woods game on the Wii they started before dinner while Chrissy and I were prepping and chatting, while Chrissy and I checked out the adds and plotted our shopping strategies for the next morning. IN the mean time Sydney was having a great time dipping carrots into ranch and sucking off the ranch until.....she dropped her carrot and went after it. She was very upset when her mean Aunt Lu Lu carried her to the sink to clean up. She had ranch everywhere arms, hair, clothes and not just her but the same places on me.

I have to say while I missed the bigger Thanksgiving with lots of friends and family the intimate meal was wonderful for this year, and made for many wonderful memories.

Whew!

Well I did not sleep Thursday night at all once I was ready to go to bed I realized I only had an hour and a half so decided to stay up DH stayed up with me and we played Wii! Well I ended up running late and missed the first store of the group. I met the girls CCM, Splashy, and Auntie Pattie. We had a fun time getting all sorts of stuff for ourselves and others I always end up with a few new closing items. I was not searching for any big items just a little fun with the girls. At 11:15 we met up with some friends and fellow shoppers for our annual lunch at Olive garden I headed home and fell asleep at 1:30 my hubby finally woke me up at 8:15 announcing he needed to leave the house I got dressed really fast and we headed to Best Buy and dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings. We came home while I was practicing guitar he drew me a hot bath figuring I had to be sore and tired from 2 day of cooking (man my hubby rocks!) After my bath we had another late night Wii moment and a great nights sleep.

Enjoy a glimpse of Sydney's past. This was taken last year.

Don't forget to thank the ones you love.
Thank you to all of my friends who check this site! I appreciate your love and support and wish you the most wonderful of holiday seasons!

The Hood's

Today I was lucky enough to do a family shoot with my sisters family I hope enjoy these images of our afternoon together! It was much harder this year now that Sydney is mobile and has an agenda of her own!

The beautiful Family
A little family fun

CheeseAh the joys of a family picture with a 18 month old!

Walking together
So cute I love Sydney's big high step as she escapes mom and dad!
Wow my daddy is so strong!

Mommy and Ms. Sydney look at our matching smiles!
The beautiful Ms. Sydney
My brother in-law is quite the cutie

Sydney has very hot parents
The love that started this happy family
I am done being cute!

Austin

A few weeks ago my wonderful hubby and I decided to try and see a David Wilcox concert during our week together (I love that this is becoming an anniversary tradition!) So we checked the upcoming shows and travelocity and found that he was playing in Austin, TX and the prices were right. When I went to buy the show tickets I found that Shawn Mullins and Dar Williams were playing the next night. SCORE 2 want to see shows one trip!
The first night we set out to find live music and good bar-b-que. The first place we tried to go to Stubs was closed then we head to
Here we found great BBQ with an awesome coffee sugar rub and the best mac and cheese ever, I almost ordered a second bowl for desert. During desert we had a great time watching people dance to live latin music (I forgot the type I know it was not salsa, but it was a very sexy dancing with the stars type of dancing.) After dinner we headed to 6th street and wandered down the street and listened to live music Rocak a billy at one bar and then headed to Friends for some deep blues music. It was amazing to have so many live music options on a Tuesday night. There were several other bars that we did not get to visit or listen. There were also skilled street musicians all over it was so cool!

Of course one of my favorite moments was the http://davidwilcox.com/index.php?page=home concert one of his current songs is called Captian Wanker click here to listen. Max and I were listening to the song before the trip and thought how great it would be to have Captian Wanker Shirts. So I made David and I shirts. We both had a great laugh!
We also saw Shawn Mullins AMAZING I love his deep voice. We also saw Dar Williams I was not as familiar with her music but enjoyed her show, the best part was her percussion player AMAZING that girl could play an amazing drum!

Every where I go I love to see all of the beautiful architecture. Austin did not disappoint me I loved the mix of old and modern buildings.

One of the things to do things in Austin is see the largest colony of urban bats. It was a little late in peak bat watching season but we were able to see small numbers flying from the balcony at our hotel. Although by the 3rd night I began to wonder if they were really birds? I don't know but in my tourist brain I am going to remember the bats!
In the south Congress district I found possible heaven
Yep thats right an air stream cupcake shop. The red velvet cake was very good the cake was awesome but Cupcakery still wins in the world best frosting in my book.

Along South Congress we wondered through some eclectic shops and a few antique shops and a very cool candy shop with some unique stuff on display. Here are a few of my favorite visual things.

I am not sure why but this pretty blue ribbon folded all pretty caught my eye

A self playing guitar

All about Music on 6th street had a great music gallery in the basement we could have bought many pieces with unlimited money and space! We did get some really cool prints for Max's classroom.
At 6th and Congress we happened about a little coffee shop (the only place we could find parking downtown) I called it good Karma when we realized that it was a really good coffee shop. Those of you that have chatted with hubby about coffee know he is very serious and picky about his coffee and this place passed his test so well we went there 4 times in 3 days. Let me just say they made an amazing cappuccino.

We had an amazing time during this spontaneous trip if you ever get a chance Austin is a great place to listen to great music fun outdoors and good coffee. I will leave you with the parting shot of my hubby in his natural habitat in a coffee shop near the espresso machine.

2nd Anniversary

Max and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary Monday. I can't believe it has been 2 years already time flies when your having fun.
This has been a year of growth and learning.
Learning how to communicate more effectively (wow this is a challenging one and I am sure it will be on my list for years to come.)
Enjoying time together, this year we started kayaking. It has been a joy paddling together not only are we exercising together we are making time to talk without distractions, and spend time without computers, cell phones, TV's etc.
We learned how to survive the challenges of a remodel, an amazing exercise in compromise, patience and adaptation.

This are just a few things we have learned this year. We look forward to learning and growing together for many decades to come.


We both had fun getting creative with gifts this year and our cotton anniversary
I had fun going through some of my favorite pictures of guitars from our tour of Taylor Guitars one of the places we visited on our honeymoon( bonus meaninghe started teaching me to play guitar this year) I printed the picture on raw cotton tore the edges and placed it in a floating frame. Max was so excited this special art piece will be beautiful in our music room.

On our anniversary I came outside to find this cotton bag sitting on the table. I was warned to open it carefully.


I pulled it out to find this awsome gift/card. I know it challenges Max to make my cards rather then purchase them but I am so lucky that he understands how much I love his works of art. Look at the cute little punch art fishies swimming upstream. Inside was an adorable poem about the fishies and his love. Here is a closer look as you can see my little paddler has a beautiful spare silver necklace paddle. As I mentioned above paddling this year has been a wonderful thing to do and spend time together.
The last two years have been an amazing glimpse of the long future ahead of us I can't wait to see what the future brings but I must remind my self to slow down and treasure the journey down the road together!.