Give Thanks! (and other miscellaneous hooliganry)

Well well (deep subject), the year is rapidly winding down. The weekend of fire and wind gave way to eerie calm, and more recently, rain....yay! The Friday after the fire the girls and I trekked down to Yucaipa, CA (way east, 2-3 hr drive) to enjoy a rare visit with some much loved friends and former neighbors, the Price's. Hooligans 1 and 2 were invited to Paige's 16th birthday "soiree", so we left H3 with Dad and enjoyed a night of (mostly) female carousing. I say "mostly" because there *are* 3 boys in the Price family, although they were vastly outnumbered by the 27-odd teenage girls who came to party and spent the night. The theme was all things French, so we ate crepes and assorted other frenchified snacks, and the girls jabbered enlessly about girl stuff and played games. And watched "Waaaaaalllllllleeeeee" until an ungodly late hour. Bless my dear friend Missy's heart....she reserved a bed for me (it was literally wall to wall girls), so I confess I didn't see the end of the movie. In spite of the general chaos that reigned, however, it was nice to be able to spend time with her and catch up on "stuff". Good friends are a gift from God, there is no doubt about it. Interestingly, on the way to Yucaipa, we went right by the huge mobile home park that was totally devastated in the fire. It's hard to understand it till you see it in person, but it was so sad. I was prompted to pray, as I drove, for the hundreds of people that lost their homes there. I was reminded that we ought never to hold on to things too tightly, lest we wake up without them one day.

Thus we coasted on into Thanksgiving week. A strange week. Strange because most of the usual daily committments were on hiatus. Unfortunately for me, Hooligan Mom, I have become far too much a creature of habit. My brain knows the pattern of my busy days, and when the pattern gets disrupted, my brain freezes. Which is why, at 4:35 on Monday afternoon Cami came shrieking down the stairs....something about a violin lesson we were already late to. Sigh......of course I wasn't thinking about it because we normally have PE on Mon. afternoons. So my brain was totally out of gear. We made it to the lesson. Late. But we made it. Grrrr.

The storm came crashing in on Tuesday night, and it rained most of Wednesday. I DID remember Ben's piano lesson (HA!), which was a good thing because he needs all of them he can get, judging by the piano events calendar for the spring, which Mrs. Peterson had neatly typed up so all us parents could collectively freak out before January. Yikes. I had almost breathed a sigh of relief looking at it, until I realized that there was a *back side* that I had not yet read. So dear hooligan 3, Lord willing and the Crick don't rise, has 5 major judged events/competitions, and 3 minor ones (fun recitals). Which makes 8. Now, If *I* had had to do this growing up, I would have been put in a padded cell long ago, but since H3 was *born* needing a padded cell, such events are actually moments of amazing sanity for him.

We made a pretense of getting some school done on Monday and Tuesday, but by Wed afternoon, school was tanking rapidly in the Hooligan house. We attended the lovely Thanksgiving Eve service at church Wed night, while the rain began to ease off a bit. I fully intended to come home and do "speed pumpkin pie", but by the time we got home, I was tired enough to talk myself into getting up early next morning to do it (uh huh....).

*****DON'T PANIC, PICTURES WILL BE APPEARING SOON*********

Thanksgiving morning the sun was out, and I slept in (yep, you guessed it......so much for early pumpkin pie making). In my defense, let me say that I had all my food "stuff" all packed and mostly ready to go in advance, so I'm not really as much of a procrastinator as I routinely appear (hmm.....how long has it been since I updated the blog???). Anyway, we were generally lazy hooligans (and darn thankful to be, at that!), and were out the door to my sister's house up in Rosamond by Edward's Air Force Base by 10 or so. I planned to have her take a family pic for us, so I *tried* to make sure everyone was wearing or brought with them something presentable and semi color coordinated. She has a good camera (as opposed to my 4mp 3x point and shoot). Yes, I have camera envy. Anyway, we made it up there. Normally, it is VERY windy up there, and very dry (desert you know), but because of the recent rain, their front yard looked like this when we drove up....


Awww...it was so pretty! That's what *I* was thinking anyway. H-Dad's first comment was "maybe I'll get the rake out and rake leaves for them this afternoon....". Typical. I made a mental note to tell him to leave the leaves alone. Usually the wind would have blown them away.
In we went, Ben immediately assuming his favorite spot:

In front of the wii of course!

Faithful hound Strider was there to welcome us........talented, too! Look how he balances that little tiny blue cup on his head! World's sweetest doggie, bar none.


and we checked out all the yummy snacky food.......


and read millions of Black Friday ads........


The older hooligans disappeared into the family room where Alex and Tabitha (the hooligan cousins) were holed up watching "The Office" season 1. I discovered this when I began hearing laughter emanating from that direction, and peeked in to see what was going on. There they all were, plus Grandpa. Not being remotely interested in watching The Office, I left them alone. Turkey was already in the oven. Time to start peeling potatoes. Heh heh. The hooligan family definitely has (at least) one weakness when it comes to holiday cooking. The humble mashed potato. The unwritten rules state that

1. you can never make too great a quantity
2. the more buttery and garlicky they are, the better
and
3. Whoever gets the most leftovers wins.

Normally, we hooligans adhere to rule #1 with at least a modicum of restraint. THIS year, however, the potato gremlin got loose, and things got a *teensy bit* out of hand (hee hee).

Here are Kendra and Grandma peeling away.....keep in mind, my mom brought no less than 4 5lb bags of potatoes, and they weren't keeping very good track of how many they were peeling.





It wasn't until they were all peeled, and we began cutting them up and putting them in the (huge, enormous) stock pot, that we began to understand just we were in for.....


This is what 15 lbs of potatoes looks like..... at this point it began to get somewhat humorous. We all stared at the pot a bit stupefied. We began speculating about what Unwritten Rule #3 might actually look like. More later on the potato saga......

Finally, the bird was hoisted out of the oven with all the yummy stuffing flowing out from the nether regions....


Grandma unveiled her traditional orange-carrot jello, and......wonder of wonders, she left out the carrots this year and put in mandarin oranges instead. Truly a cause for thanksgiving!! But she thought the jello looked too lonely there on the big empty plate, so she *had* to decorate it..........

What the....??? Yes, those are pea pods and baby carrots....(chills going up spine, hair standing on end).....yikes! It was .....um......decorative? Yeah, thats it.....sort of Weight Watcher's Cookbook circa 1965-ish type decorative. But the jello was good, and all the hooligan kids were quite vocal in their thanks to Grandma for not putting carrots in the jello this year. Fortunately Grandma has a good sense of humor.

Thus the meal was consumed. Everyone eating all the potatoes they could hold (aren't they beautiful??)

We all went around, as we knew we ought, and said what we were thankful for this year. I think we were all thankful to just be together as a family. God has been very good to all of us. Hooligan tendencies and all. As we all left the table, my bil John (hooligan extraordinaire, marathoner, rock climber) commented off-handedly that seeing we had indulged in *one* of the 7 deadly sins, we could now go and enjoy another...heh heh! That would be *cough* gl****ny and sl**h. So then, of course, not to let an intellectual opportunity get away, we had to enumerate all the 7 deadly sins (google helped a little, I think), and my mother the grammarian even thought up a pneumonic/neumonic/numonic.....how does one spell that word anyway??.... to remember them. It was pathetically geeky. While all this was going on, cleanup was happening, and leftovers being portioned out. And then we saw it......


Oh the hideousness of it!!! It's....it's.....the Leaning Tower of Potatoes!! This is truly obscene, folks. One might also ponder the amount of Cool Whip that is evidently consumed in this house. But I digress..... lets just say we almost had collective incontinence we laughed so hard. This, folks, is what 10-odd lbs of leftover potatoes looks like. I'm sure H1 (that would be Kendra, the mashed potato queen) was swooning with visions of leftover mashed potatoes.

Anyway, the day continued with birthday festivities for my nephew Alex who was actually born on Thanksgiving Day. Here he is looking non-plussed with his 16 glowing candles....

"Hmm....maybe I should go blow those out someday...."

His present from Grandma was most unique. He got 2 (yes 2) cards, which he was obliged to open first. Ahem: Card #1......



Then he opened card #2.....



Ooooooh! I'm starting to see a trend! what could this mean????

Then he opened the "Piece de Resistance".........

The perfect gift for the 16yr old male.......a monkey toilet brush!!! Awwwww.....ain't it just the cutest thaang????? Hmmm. I'm not sure what to make of that face. Anyway, I'll bet none of his friends got monkey toilet brushes for *their* birthdays!! Go Grandma!!

And to end things off, here's my lovely niece Tabitha (the ballerina)....


and a very nice picture of Mom and Dad Carson.....


and here's Mark's contribution to the 7 deadly sins.....


and mine......(I'm mixing up Rice Crispy Treats......like we needed more food....)