Thanksgiving in Indiana

This year it was just us, but we still went all out with the turkey and all the fixins. Even Binsey got to eat the innards.


Post thanksgiving, we had turkey sandwiches, turkey soup and turkey stir-fry. 13 pounds of turkey goes a long way between 2 people!

Right now I'm in the middle of final exams, which is all long papers I have to write. I just turned in my long theory paper today (I've got a short theory paper due later), so that feels good. What doesn't feel so good is that we're both coming down with a cold. I guess spending time around 40,000 or more students tends to spread germs no matter how careful you are. I'm just happy that libraries are now all online so I can be at home to study.

Thanksgiving take two

I realized I never updated about our second Thanksgiving. On the actual day, we went to my cousin Tara and Derell's house. It was so much fun because there were tons of people, including Tara's two adorable little boys and my cousin Ted and Liz's adorable little boy and little girl, and a bunch of us 'grown ups'. There's a big age gap between me and my cousins, so Katana, who's 5, told me that he was disappointed because he thought I was going to be a kid. haha. Paul had a blast playing with the boys; they were climbing all over him on some kind of pirate raid, and Emily drew me some nice pictures and gave me a foot massage (apparently Aunt Tara's influence - nice one!). Needless to say, it was tons of fun being around all the kids. We really haven't seen kids since we were living in Oxford and our neighbor's kids would play outside our window. It's even better when it's your own family, and it really made me appreciate being close to everyone.

Since we've got lots of time right now, Paul and I helped my mom make a bunch of goodies for the feast. We made olive and cream cheese penguins, deviled eggs, bacon-wrapped dates, corn bread pudding and "turkey" cupcakes. The cupcakes were so much fun to make -we saw a picture in a magazine and just had to do it.

Here's the finished product:

From Fall2008

And I think this is a good place to plug the impressive pumpkin we carved for Halloween. We used a chisel to make the face on it - so much better than a knife!

From Fall2008

So if you think we don't find good uses of our time, think again!

Thanksgiving in England

No, the English do not celebrate Thanksgiving. And you can't buy canned (or as they call it "tinned") pumpkin here to make pumpkin pies. But, despite these setbacks, we celebrated a legitimate Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. A big thanks goes to our friends Brady & Amanda for hosting the event at their fancypants non-student apartment (no Brillo pad rugs there!).


While our husbands were in school, Amanda, Danalisa and I prepared the turkey. Somehow I got the job of cleaning out the turkey, which was an adventure! Jodi had some friends visiting, so she missed out on the turkey experience.


We managed to have a great spread; Danalisa & Steve did mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, Jodi made green beans & stuffing, I made cranberry sauce and corn bread pudding, and Amanda managed to acquire some canned pumpkin from her mother-in-law when she visited, so she made homemade pumpkin pie for us all! Yum!

I think the two most remarkable things that happened that night were 1) Brady solved a Rubik's cube in 2.5 minutes, and 2) Millie (who's 2 years old) liked the olives I brought so much that she stuck one on each finger and showed them off to everyone!

Paul and I have a lot to be thankful for this year, for our marriage, our families, and our old friends and our new friends here in Oxford!