Pie Anyone?

Ah, Thanksgiving. That happy time of year when there is lots of cooking, lots of feasting and I go away fat and happy. Literally. Time to pull out the extra roomy pants. This year we went on a hike before the feast with my family...as if that would help. It just made me hungrier. I think I ate the most, followed closely by Allison who blew everyone away with her food packing abilities. She also about broke my arm trying to get at my slice of apple pie with ice cream. She's my kinda girl.

Here are the highlights:

We made pie. Three of them. From scratch. Seriously. The craziest part is that they actually turned out pretty good. If anyone knows me and my cooking abilities, they should know that this could be counted as a miracle. Granted, it was a team effort with Jevan, and he is a better cook, but we are both novices when it comes to pie crusts and meringue. We were quite proud of ourselves. So much so that we took pictures. We made a lemon meringue, an apple and a chocolate cream...all in the time it takes to watch Ratatouille (we watched it while we cooked. Fitting, no?). We even gave our apple a pie a sheep. What's an apple pie without a good livestock cut-out on it? That's what we say. Ours got a sheep. Baaa. It was good times.
Here's a close up of the sheep:

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Thanksgiving morning I woke up to Jane doing her usual morning chant..."Mom! I awake! Mom! I awake!" If you don't come in promptly in turns into a song, and then a wail...and eventually a scream. I go in to get her in the wailing stage, and then decide to hop back into my bed with her 'cause dang, it's cold. Just as we walk past my bedroom window, I open my blinds and....what the? What is that? It's none other than a giant hot air balloon taking off from my backyard neighbor's lawn (okay, so maybe it wasn't on their lawn but somewhere close by ... the elementary school field maybe?) It was so close and SO BIG! Jane was mesmerized. We went out onto the deck and watched it climb into the sky. It was definitely a highlight. Jane talked about it all morning.

We went hiking with my family in the afternoon. We tried to put Jane in her backpack but she spent the whole time wanting in and then out, and then in, and then out. Drove Jevan nuts. We eventually gave up and hiked home a little early...which was okay because I was starving!

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It was a good Turkey day. We spent the rest of the weekend getting lots of stuff done we needed to and also playing. We went to Gardner Village to see the elves (so cold!!!) and also tried out the McDonald's playplace by our house. Not so good. Jane got trampled by a bunch of rowdy kids up in one of the tunnels and wouldn't go back in after that. AND, we remembered why we hate McDonalds. The food is yuck. Even Allie wouldn't eat it. And that's saying something.