Thanksgiving 2011!

We had a full house for Thanksgiving and it was a crazy blast!  I missed posting last week because life was really busy in a boring way.  Lots of cleaning, washing sheets, sorting piles of junk and whatnot.

Monday late in the evening family arrived!  So we went from three people and one feline hardly filling the house to being overrun.  Grandad and Didi drove out from North Carolina with Jake and Josie, their border collies, and they picked Grammy up in Atlanta on their way.  We were so excited to host our first out of town guests in the house that we didn't realize that the next few days would involve being constant referees between all living creatures below waistline.

First the dogs were trying to eat the cat and Hannah ran screaming from the dogs every time they looked at her.  Then Max realized that this is his house and the dogs were more scared of him so he spent the rest of the week chasing them around.  Hannah finally warmed-up to the dogs to the point that she could walk toward them and maybe even touch them if she was holding someone's hand.  All the while Max still runs from Hannah if she gets too excited about his presence.

We were so excited that Grandad brought his chain saw!  He spent Tuesday morning taking two little trees from our side yard to try to save the fence.  We were also busy around the house with meal preparations, but tried to take breaks for time outside so the animals didn't kill us all.  We went to the park on Wednesday morning and let the dogs and Hannah run around.

Here is Hannah and Didi chasing after the dogs and Grandad.

 Here is Josh and Max chasing after Hannah who found that it is really fun to run down the hills.

Here is Max pretending Josie isn't there while Josie is just hoping to find a way to be dominant.

 Hannah with Grandad and Didi.

 Having so much fun on the swing.  She actually cried when we tried to get her on the slide and then cried more when we had to go home.

We even stepped out for Cajun Cuisine on Wednesday night.

Now for the main event.

We started Thursday morning with the Turkey going in the oven.  I tried a new recipe that I found on Pinterest because this was my first full turkey and I didn't want to mess it up.  It worked great!  The main point is to cook the turkey breast down.  This is how it came out of the oven at the perfect temperature.

  Then after another hour of cooking sides and rounding up the troops we laid out the spread on the buffet counter. (Just to let you know the candied yams were made out of left over homemade sweet potato baby food and they were a hit!)

Unfortunately since I am the resident picture taker and I am also the resident cook there is a shortage of pictures.  I did snag this one in the morning of Hannah stealing the entire bag of potato chips off the table and stuffing her face... and her hands.

After dinner I clocked out for the day and didn't get any more pictures.  Josh then drove down to pick-up his brother, Jason from the airport because our house wasn't quite full enough.  When they got back we served up pie!

Friday morning we said goodbye to Grandad, Didi, Grammy, and the dogs.  Then we all succumbed to illness.  Josh's tummy went on strike and the faucets on Hannah and My noses jammed in the on position.  We tried to make the most of it and entertain Jason, but we were confined to the house Friday.  Saturday Josh was feeling better so we got out and about a little despite the rain.  We introduced Jason to some Cajun food and finished off the night hanging the chandelier in the dining room (which was a little late for Thanksgiving due to minor delays) and rehanging the mirror.

Unfortunately last night Jason joined the club with a sick stomach and our colds got worse.  Talk about a rough weekend.  It really makes me feel that the stress of preparing a holiday meal was almost a walk in the park.

November ALREADY!?!?!

 It has been another busy week around here just surviving life and we even did a little painting on top of it all.  Our Kitchen/Dinning room walls are painted in time for Thanksgiving.  If you have forgotten, here is a reminder of what it looked like before:

 Here I am cutting in.  We found that the paneling wasn't very hard to paint with the roller, but even with the awesome cutting in tutorial from Sherry at Young House Love I found that the brush didn't get into the paneling divots very well and being the resourceful girl that I am I pulled out a cheappy brush from my craft stuff to speed things along.

 

 I even surprised Josh by painting and rehanging the sconces that hang above the computer while he was at work.

So here is the beautiful new kitchen, which is now the same color as the living room.

No judging the mess!  That is an on going project and I didn't feel like hiding everything before the pictures.

 

  We only primed the backs of cabinets and the bulkhead above the cabinets.  We decided to match them to the cabinets and not the wall.  The primer gives an idea of what it will look like.  We hope to get around to painting them sometime after Thanksgiving and our holiday guests leave.

We hung the mirror from nails that were already there and then realized they were too high and just haven't fixed it yet.  We are also going to replace the ceiling fan with the chandelier that we picked up at the Habitat Restore a few weeks back (hopefully in the next week).

 

 And now it is time for some Hannah cuteness!

The other day Hannah decided she wanted to wear her Halloween braid around the house when she woke-up.

 

Another afternoon I heard Hannah in the other room saying "MmaAAW" over and over.  When I went into check she was holding Max and kissing him over and over.  "MmaAAW" is the cute kissing sound she recently started (not to be confused with Ma which she never says).  So as you can see she has taken to Max quite well.

 Hannah over did the partying on Halloween and it took her a few days to recover.  One morning after her nap she didn't want to be in bed, but she didn't want to get up either.  So I let her cuddle on the couch and watch cartoons for a while.

 

There is finally enough hair on the top of her head to put it in a pony tail.  I have no idea why she is making this  face.

Halloween

 We had a great Halloween!

The past few years Josh and I have painted our pumpkins.  Hannah's has recently developed an interest in candles that started around her birthday when we introduced her to birthday candles.  With that in mind we decided to carve a pumpkin this year.  The problem was that Hannah couldn't really get involved in the carving process so we decided to let her have her own opportunity to decorate the pumpkin first.

So here she is with marker in hand as she was just getting started.

Here was her final result.

And here is Josh's interpretation of Hannah in Pumpkin form.  It started with the idea to carve the pumpkin's teeth to match Hannah's developing smile and then he ran with it.

 Halloween morning Hannah decided she wanted to put on her tutu.  I figured that was the perfect time to show off her new twirling skills that she has been working on.

We had a great time going over to our friends' house for dinner and a wagon train of trick or treating.  Here is Hannah in her Rapunzel dress. (we weren't sure how cool it would get so we left her pants on)

Here is the braid that I made her so that it was easier to tell that she was the maiden with the flowing blond hair. (We couldn't find the headband that went with the dress so we made due with another)

She really got into running to every door and expecting candy.  At first she just wanted to keep going back to the same door because she new they had lots more candy, and later on in the evening she would get upset when no one answered the door because she wanted more candy.

 It got to be past her bed time and she decided that she was done with the head band and ready to eat her spoils.  We all quickly learned that Hannah can rip through the wrappers with her teeth.  She is very patient and persistent at getting in so we had to keep a close watch on her as we walked the rest of the way home.