We had the most wonderful Thanksgiving.  Everything was amazing.  People got along.  We discussed a lot of Charlie Sheen.  Oh, and we drank an amazing amount of eggnog.  We survived (with my cold, my survival was in question there for a bit), and wonder of wonders, as of 9:20 Friday morning, all of the dishes are done!  I even have turkey stock cooling already.

So, a rundown.

Soup we had a soup course for the first time this year, mom made a delicious lobster bisque.  I like this tradition!

Turkey I brined the bird overnight, stuffed a compound butter under the skin all over, and shoved an onion and an apple up the birds tush.  Then I baked it at 350F for 3.5 hours.  It was perfect.  Moist, flavorful, delicious.  I was wishing I made a bigger bird it was so good!

Mashed Potatoes Mom found a recipe for make ahead mashed potatoes, and I have to admit I was a bit wary, but they were delicious!  Creamy, soft, not heavy at all.  Very impressive.

Stuffing We had two stuffings, both made by my mom (is she amazing or what?)  Oyster stuffing, with the words biggest oysters ever yum! I didn’t get a chance to try the cornbread stuffing, but it looked and smelled delicious.

Sweet Potatoes Crash Hot Sweet Potatoes, inspired by The Pioneer Woman.  They weren’t pretty, but were mighty tasty.  Those leftovers will be served as tonight’s side dish.

Ratatouille My sister was in charge of veggies this year, and her ratatouille was delicious.  It was also beautiful until I scooped it out of the carefully layered pyrex pan to put it into a serving bowl.  My bad.  Ratatouille may be the perfect thanksgiving veggie.  It’s colorful, satisfying, and way lighter than a casserole.

Carrots Just to add some variety (and even more color to our rainbow table), my brother in law made creamy carrots from the Julie Child school of thought.  I know it’s hard to improve on simple carrots, but the addition of a ton of butter and heavy cream took these carrots from pedestrian to out of this world amazing.  Those left overs are all mine.  I packaged them up first and hid them in the back of my fridge.  My lunch today is just going to be creamy carrots.

Cranberry Sauce I kept it simple and just followed the recipe on the bag, adding a bit of orange juice, a cinnamon stick, and a pinch of aleppo pepper.  So good.  I wish I had some of the rolls left over to spread this on for breakfast!

Rolls Oh, cannot forget these!  My sister made crescent rolls, from scratch.  Sure beats the hell out of anything from Pillsbury!

I feel like I’m missing something from my rundown, because my table was groaning under the weight of all the food.  It was all so good.

Wish you were here!

Well, I’m off to start tonight’s pot roast and get my Challah going.  Shabbat waits for no-one this time of year!

I promise, the potty training updates will end soon.  I just had to share this observation about the difference between boys and girls.

When you potty train a girl and she “gets it”, the puddles are pretty much over.  When you potty train a boy, and he “gets it”, now instead of having to wash a diaper, you have to wash the floor, the wall, the sink, the book you were reading to him, and shower and change your clothes.  Girls aim down.  Boys aim everywhere.

Two year old (will be three next month) is missing out on her preschool’s Thanksgiving event today.  She is instead sitting next to me on the sofa, still in her pajamas, watching Yo Gabba Gabba and sipping on a cup of lukewarm super sweet tea.  She keeps saying “me no feel so well Mommy”.  I ask her what doesn’t feel good, and she says “Evebyting”  Poor dear.  Her brother on the other hand feels fine and is running around like a crazy child.

When Mim does feel well enough to play, she’s building “castles” or setting up train tracks all over the living room. And as soon as she steps away to lay down and rest some more, her brother comes through like King Kong and destroys everything, which sets Mim off crying.

Oh, and did I mention it is thunderstorming, so I can’t even let the boy burn off some energy outside?

Luckily, the kids aren’t afraid of thunder, just of imaginary kitty cats, so we’ve got that small blessing.  I just hope we all get over these colds soon.  Thanksgiving is no fun in a sick house!

In the continuing saga of Becca breaking every freaking thing she owns . . . DH was unloading the dishwasher and called me in to see something.  My measuring spoons had slipped out of place and melted against the bottom heating element of the dishwasher.  I hope they didn’t break the dishwasher as well, but at the very least, my measuring spoons are broken and need replacing.  (This makes item #47 in the last 20 days for those of you playing the at home game.)

Obviously, I was displeased.

I cried out “shit!” as I pulled the mishappen plastic out of the dishwasher.  To which Miriam responded likewise at the top of her lungs.

DH then started laughing hysterically at the 2 year old shouting “shit”, which only encouraged her more.

head*keyboard

So now my 2 year old is wandering around shouting “shit”, my 20 month old is crying, my spoons are melted, and my husband is laughing while washing dishes.

At least something good came out of this, right?

If you’ve ever wanted to see what a true mess looks like, follow these instructions:

1. Set up your 20 month old at the little table with a spoon, paper towel, and a small bowl of chocolate pudding

2. Dash off to deal with sick, crying, nearly 3 year old

3. Return 30 seconds later to see son, table, and most of the kitchen floor covered in chocolate pudding

4. Freeze in shock, allowing said 20 month old a chance to dash off into the living room and climb up onto the cream colored sofa

Yeah.  Not fun.  I wish I had gotten pictures, but I was so shocked I just cleaned it up first.  I’m sure your imagination can fill in the rest though.

I don’t do “horror”.  I don’t like scary movies.  I don’t enjoy suspense novels.  I can’t even handle haunted houses.  My husband however, loves the stuff.  His fondest memories from high school are of working the haunted house in town.  He thinks Steven King novels don’t qualify as “scary”.  Monster movies are totally his thing.  He’s been reading The Walking Dead comics since issue 1 came out way back when.  So, needless to say, he got very excited when he found out they were turning his favorite comic series into a t.v. show.

Yesterday, we watched episode one of The Walking Dead. I don’t know how he conned me into watching it, but he did.  All my facebook and twitter feeds are full of praise for this show, and honestly, I can see why.  It’s visually stunning, well plotted, and scary as all get out.

The problem is, it gave me horrible nightmares.  Plus, my 20 month old isn’t talking yet, and in the middle of the night, his grunts and whimpers in his sleep sound awfully zombie-like.

Add to that the time change, with kids being up and ready for the day at 6 a.m., and I’m not sure I’m going to make it through the day.  Every time I close my eyes, I see a half corpse-zombie crawling through the grass.  Or a horde of zombies attacking a tank.  (If you’ve seen episode 1, you know the scenes I’m talking about, if you haven’t, don’t worry, I’m not giving out spoilers.)

So, I think today may be a huge quantity of coffee day.

I understand episode 2 premiered last night.  Ugh.  Pray for me.

In other news, better news, happier news that may just distract me from the horrors my darling husband inflicted on me, I have winners!

I plugged the numbers into a random number generator.  Okay, really, since there were only 10 entries I grabbed 10 scraps of paper, wrote 1-10 on each of them and laid them on the coffee table this morning since we were up at 6 a.m. anyway.  Asher grabbed two of them and brought them to me.  Well, no, Asher grabbed two pieces of paper and shoved them in his mouth.  I fished them out and figured out who our winners are!

Drumroll please!

The winners  of a $50 gift card courtesy of Kodak Gallery are . . .

Entry number 4, Jessica Garcia and entry number 1, Dreamsweaver. Watch your email for a message from me.  I’ll need your address so I can have your prizes shipped to you.

Those of you who didn’t win, keep reading because we’ll have another give away soon!  Have a great, zombie free day!

Who loves photo albums?  You know I do!  I bet you do too. Well, lucky for me, I got on a list.  What kind of list?  A blogger list!  Somehow, Kodak found out about little old me and decided to give me a free photo album, and to give two of my readers free albums too!  You lucky readers you.

For Halloween, Kodak made all sorts of amazing new halloween themed photo albums, and through the 11th, you can order one for your very own.  Or you can hang on to your giftcard and do albums for holiday gifts, or for yourself of the year, or whatever.  Don’t tell Kodak I said that though!

So now that you’re all hot and bothered for one of my two $50 Kodak gift cards, allow me to sweeten the deal!  Now through the 11th, in addition to the really cool Halloween theme books, you can get 50 free Mommy Cards, and free prints if you order a medium or large size photo book.  I’m over the moon here myself.

How do you get one of these amazing cards?  It’s easy!  Head on over to Kodak.com and take a look at the goodies.  Then come back here and comment on what size book you like best, or what card design, or whatever.  Basically, tell me what you would order if you were lucky enough to win one a gift card for free Kodak.com products.  It’s that simple.

Somebody is going to win, actually, because Kodak and I are so generous, two somebodies will win.  It might as well be you!

You have until the end of the day on Sunday, the 7th of November to enter my giveaway.  It doesn’t give you much time, so hurry up and comment already!

Late last night, my 20 month old decided to grab hold of the top of my laptop and pull backwards, hard.  Luckily, he wasn’t hurt.  Unfortunately, he did manage to crack the screen on my computer, rendering it a useless brick.  An expensive useless brick that is.

A few years back, my husband bought himself a toy.  An Acer netbook.  It’s the teeniest tiniest computer I’ve ever seen, but for now, it’s all I’ve got.

He’s got $5,000 worth of computers and parts all over the basement.  I’ve got a $200 Lilliputian laptop, running linux I might add.  Obviously, I have no familiarity with linux.  He tells me it is in fact running Ubuntu, but really, to me it’s all “huh?”

I managed to get access to my blog though, without any tears!  Hooray!

So, here I am pecking away at a minuscule keyboard, trying not to be resentful that when his computer has the teeniest issue, he runs straight to Tiger Direct or Dell and gets whatever it needs, no questions asked, and when my computer is killed violently, I hear “maybe before the end of the year”.

At any rate, here I am, with 75% of the functionality I really need.  So, I’ll muddle though, and the blog is still functional.

Counting my blessings.

So, any advice on how to make this Ubuntu netbook fun?  Please?

So far today I have

• Gotten two kids up, fed, dressed, and one dropped off at preschool
• Taken the other and gone to the store and procured coffee for the house
• Come home
• Paid bills
• Scheduled a doctor’s appointment for my husband
• Gone back to preschool to pick up older child
• Dropped off the car  for an oil change and walked with two toddlers home from the auto shop
• Carried one screaming, fighting toddler through every intersection because he refused to hold my hand
• Carried the other toddler between every intersection because she was tired
• Put both children down for naps

That does not include changing diapers, wiping tushies, wiping noses, or any of the picking up around the house I have done because all of that goes without saying.

ARGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

And why, I ask you why, is there grated coconut all over my floor?

Both of my kids have bad colds.  They started Erev Yom Kippur, and sniffled through services all Yom Kippur morning.  They were so miserable that we didn’t go back for Nilah.  I just couldn’t bear to bring them out again, into the rain, to make them try to sit still.  Instead they slept right through services, and are much better for it.  My mom stayed back from services with me and we visited and talked.  It was very nice.

But now everyone is back to their normal routines, except for my poor little monkeys.  Miriam couldn’t go to preschool today because of her cold, so we’re having a PBS Kids day, with unlimited juice boxes.  At the moment, Mim is playing with the telephone and Asher is taking all of their plates out of their drawer and piling them up on the floor of my kitchen, then putting them back into the drawer.  I see an extra load of dishes in my future.

I hope your family is doing better than mine today.  Toddlers with colds are just miserable.