'Tis the Season!

It's time to decorate the tree and put up the decorations... unfortunately since I've been out of town, all this won't happen until next weekend.

We had a great Thanksgiving. I made a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, scalloped corn, rolls, and a double layer pumpkin pie. A couple things were store bought, but I'm not saying which ones. I did make the pie...


Tigger has a few snacks that day, too -- what a contented cat. I also discovered this week not only can he open drawers and doors to get clothes out, he knows how to unzip my gym bag!


We had our neighbor, David, over for dinner and he brought three pies, also. Amy got together with her friends later in the day, and everyone was bringing leftovers, so that took care of some of the food! I made butter molded into my turkey candy molds for the rolls. Had a little trouble getting them out, then read I should have sprayed the molds with butter spray. I also watched the Macy's parade.

Ally and I went to Frankenmuth for a long weekend. We flew to Detroit on Friday and back on Monday. It was cold, around 40 degrees all weekend. We were so glad to get back to San Diego -- it was 65 degrees, and we rolled the windows down just to enjoy it. Saw lots of family and shopped at the world's largest Christmas store, Bronners. It is as big as three football fields. I spent a couple hours there and probably only saw half of the things. I did buy some Christmas things and some ornaments. We also spent time playing miniature golf, the kids swam, and we did more shopping. We had great flights, the only negative thing that happened was the Grinder Switch in the room across the hall. We were too noisy for her, and she let us know it, even though half the time it was other people running up and down the halls and making a ruckus.




I got to see my friend Sherry from high school and, in fact, spent my last night there at her house. We did lots of eating at places we miss out here like Cracker Barrel, Bob Evans, and Bob's Big Boy. Founds some Mallo Cups, too. Missed Starbucks and picked one up at Chicago airport on the way back. I can't describe everything we saw and did, but I'll post a slideshow at the end of this page.

Of all things, we had a huge rain in San Diego while we were gone. We missed it, but heard we had one to two inches and some snow in the higher elevations around here.

Pastor Steve is back from his year long deployment in Kosovo. I wasn't here for the weekend, so did not get to see the surprise tree lighting he did at the church, but Chris was there and with his eagle eyes, saw Steve somewhere before the actual lighting. I can take off my prayer bracelet now that he has returned safely -- wore that thing for a year and even have a slight tan line where it rests on my arm.

The downstairs is totally clean and ready to be decorated... now to work on cleaning the upstairs...