Thanksgiving

So I just looked at the calendar and realized that Thanksgiving is happening in a week! When did that happen? Did I mention the family is coming here? Here's a tale of Thanksgiving 2007, when I last hosted the event.

I need to preface this whole story by saying that my mom doesn't think that I can cook, which was half the reason that I wanted to host Thanksgiving - to prove that we wouldn't be dining on cereal and Lean Cuisines. We'd be eating real food, made by me.  Back in 2007, I was still living in an apartment.

As I was getting ready for the event, my friend, Amanda, told me that the one time she made a turkey, she'd bought one with a pop up timer, so if I'd just get one of those, I'd be golden. Sweet. Butterball Pop Up Timer Turkey on the list. I had a recipe for Yukon Gold mashed potatoes that I wanted to make from Real Simple, cheesy potatoes, green bean casserole, Stove Top stuffing (whatever, I'd never made stuffing), cranberry sauce, caramel rice krispie treats, and corn, probably other stuff too. My sister and mom were both bringing pies, and bread.  Lunch was slated to begin at noon, so I thought people would show up at 11ish or something. 

Sometime in the early morning, I pulled that gross stuff out of the inside of a turkey (YUCK!!) season it and put into the roaster into the oven. Around 9 a.m., I was doing a load of laundry when my parents arrived.  9 a.m. is nowhere close to noon in case you can't tell time.  It's completely different.  I needed trash bags and saran wrap or something like that, so I sent my dad to the grocery store.  My dad has never met a stranger - I figured he'd be gone for 45 minutes.  I needed to run downstairs and throw clothes into the dryer, my mom asked what she could do?  I suggested she start peeling potatoes.  My mom failed to mention that she is a champion potato peeler.  I was gone for about 2.2 minutes.  She had peeled half of a five pound bag if not more in my absence.  No joke.  I picked up a potato and started peeling and glanced over at my mom who was whirling away.  I said something about how she must have "the good potato peeler."  We switched.  The lightning fast peeling continued.

Elizabeth and her family arrived sometime close to 11, because that's normal and expected.  When Elizabeth arrived we kicked food prep into high gear. One problem - my apartment kitchen was small and not open at all.  Insanely small.  And then things start to get amusing, sort of...

My mom: "Rebekah, what do you want for Christmas?"
Before I can even say a word....
My sister, Elizabeth: "A bigger kitchen." 
The three of us in there was a tight squeeze. At some point my mom decided we should check on that turkey - not her first rodeo. 
She opens the oven door: "Rebekah, where's the pop up timer?"
Me: "On the turkey." And I was only trying to be halfway sarcastic.
My mom looked at me, and said: "Well, I don't see one here.  Where's your meat thermometer?"
Me: "Did you ever give me a meat therometer? I don't own one."

So yes, a 15 pound turkey in the oven for 8 - 9 people and no way to tell if it's done. Until my mom says that if we can twist the leg and it nearly comes off it's done. (My timer was almost up too FYI).  The leg thing worked and the turkey was great. I have since acquired a meat thermometer.  Thanksgiving got substantially less exciting from there - my sister brought this awesome French Silk Pie from a bakery that is now closed - it was so piled high that my knife disappeared.

When is it Over?

I'm lucky to live in a state where budgets have to be balanced every year - state, and local. What? What? That means that either services have to be cut or taxes have to be raised. This past year, both have happened in the Omaha metro. Full disclosure - I no longer live in the city, so many things don't actually impact me. Certain things, I honestly admit, I do not notice. I benefit from having a company car (yes, I can hear you telling me how much I suck). I am very thankful for this benefit, trust me. As a result, I don't pay to license my car, and when the county increased the wheel tax, I went, eh.   And when the city decided that they had to change their snow removal schedule to save some money - I thought, no big deal - I PAY for my snow removal every month, and many other things in my HOA dues. The city also decided to implement a tax for people that work in the city, but don't live there (Hi Council Bluffs commuters!). When I lived in Lansing they had something like this too, but I didn't actually work in the city - I found that I when I tried to sign up to pay this tax and payroll shot that idea down.

So what will impact me???  This thing called a "restaurant tax." I eat out a couple times a week.  And I'm okay with paying it, because it's 2.5%. I figure it's like a local option sales tax, which I grew up with.  Many people aren't happy with all of these changes - I'm not sure what exactly they'd like the solution to be other than no restaurant tax.  No snow removal?  Don't fix the potholes that were awful this year? Eliminate Fire and Rescue all together?   And therein is where the rub has happened of sorts - the current mayor inherited some problems that started before I even moved here, a little thing known as "pension spiking." Will it effect some people's dining out? Perhaps, but as a single person with no kids, the 20 extra cents that I was charged on my lunch today had no major consequence on me - I'm more likely to eat out less to save $8.67 not 20 cents.   It's tacked on after at the total, and before the sales tax. Typically, I see it listed as "occupancy tax" or "restaurant tax."  This made me chuckle. Here's what my receipt looked like from Brewburgers (Diners, Drive Ins and Dives and I agree - great place!!!)  "Mayor Fee"

There's a group that's working to recall the mayor, which is well within their rights. By Friday they have to gather 27,000 signatures, so they set up places to sign in parking lots, wave signs, use bullhorns, etc.  They aren't happy about all the spending, so they want the city to spend $900,000 on a special election to recall the mayor so that he could get kicked out shortly before his term is up. Yeah, I'm confused by that too, but it's a free country, do what you want. Doing all that wouldn't result in any MORE taxes ore services being cut by my logical thought process. W

My favorite part of this story just happened over the weekend. Since many of the people that have been hired to work for this "campaign" aren't from Omaha - they apparently don't know what they mayor looks like.  Yes, they did indeed ask the mayor to sign the petition to recall himself. He declined.  http://www.omaha.com/article/20101116/NEWS01/711169925

Mini-vacation

I took Monday and Tuesday of this week off for some mental health purposes. On Monday, I took my nephew, Ethan, to the Iowa State Fair. I figured after chasing after him all day, I'd need a day to rest and catch up.

We arrived at the fair just before 10 on Monday and got a funnel cake. It's vacation, right? There was a veterans parade, so we grabbed some curb and sat down to watch it. As the different troops went by we watched and cheered at different times. Eventually, a WWII replica jeep passed. I turned to Ethan and said, "That's the kind of jeep that your great-grandpas would have ridden in when they fought in WWII." (Keep in mind he has met neither of these men as my maternal grandpa died before I was born and my paternal grandpa died when I was nine). Ethan's response - blank stare basically communicating, I have no idea what WWII is and I don't know who the heck those people are either. I gave about two seconds of thought to explain WWII to Ethan and decided it was a concept for another day.

Posing on a lion, the kid loves playgrounds. I probably could have just taken him to one of those.

We took off for the midway as he wanted to ride some rides and play some games. These are things that I don't normally do at the fair, and I know he doesn't do either. Other than maybe the "Giant Slide" or "Sky Glider." He enjoyed some bumper cars, small roller coaster,I rode something that I thought was going to make me vomit from spinning, and we won some stuffed animals.

Time to find more food and free stuff. He loaded up on some free tatoos, and went to play in the spray fountain, and some nice older lady gave me some free ride tickets. Seriously, is the Midwest great or what?

Fair Squares - Being sold for $2, I opted for the with peanut butter, the plain ones, were also $2, but twice this size.

After a healthy lunch of food on a stick, we sat and watched a free kids show, checked out the butter cow and butter Dr. Suess. And then headed over to the "exotic" petting zoo. We were able to feed the animals here, most of which were goats, which are apparently exotic. Um, okay. After which Ethan and I had a discussion about needing to use the hand sanitizer. Which basically boiled down to because you need to as I didn't quite know how to explain hoof and mouth disease to him.

After almost 6 hours at the fair, we were both tired and decided to call it a day and headed back to the car. Here's what Ethan looked like when I got back to my sister's house....

Wiped out.

Sucked in...

I'm currently having some laptop problems, so until my keyboard is fixed posting is difficult.  In the meantime, know that I've been doing a LOT of reading and have knocked out most of the Sookie Stackhouse books. And one of these weeks I will take/get some curling pics.

cool idea

I like to dye eggs, who doesn't, but I think next year I want to try this idea: http://www.ourbestbites.com/2008/03/silk-dyed-eggs.html

How cool? I'm going to check the local goodwill.

Vacation - Day 2: Epcot and a LOT of Rain

My mom and I woke up and headed to breakfast at Kona. The trip we were on provided us with free breakfast at any of the restaurants in the Polynesian. We'd talked to people at dinner the night before about the restaurants. They suggested avoiding the Cook's place in our hotel. (We were going to be having a character breakfast at Ohana on Day 3.) I decided to get the banana stuffed french toast for breakfast. Um, clearly should have asked to see a picture of that before ordering. It was about six pieces of toast, along with the bananas somewhere inside. And it came with strawberry syrup. And a side of bacon. It was massive and literally looked like half a loaf. The guy sitting next to me said he was "going to get that, but decided it was too big." I looked at the hellacious meat platter (bacon, sausage, ham, etc.) he was eating. His platter also included toast and eggs. I wish I'd taken a picture. I finished maybe half of my french toast before giving up since I didn't want to be sick later.

After breakfast we went downstairs to buy Mom a ticket to Epcot. I'd done volunteer work so my ticket was free. :) And then we boarded the tram to make the trek. After arriving I got not only a ticket but a supercool Miss Piggy button. I adored Miss Piggy when I was about 3. And I was amazed that people kept thanking me for volunteering and asking me what I volunteer work I had done.

We started out on some random ride that I was so not impressed with, I didn't bother to remember the name. My mom liked it. People had been mentioning Test Trak, so I wanted to try it. Mom refused. It was a lot of fun - fast moving.

We checked out a few other rides, went to ride Soarin which was A-MAZ-ING!!! It's a tour of California where you feel like you're there - sights, smells, rushing through the areas. Unreal! Then we checked out Honey I Shrunk the Audience before I was really hungry. It had begun to rain, someone steadily so we picked up some fashionable Disney ponchos.

Mom and me in our trendy ponchos

Next we took off toward the world area of Epcot in search of a meal. My mom prefers to sit down to eat. We stopped in at British Pub - that had a 15 minute wait. Nope, mom didn't want to wait that long. Let's go back to that restaurant in Canada. By now it's POURING! We get back there, they're booked for the rest of the day. I made the executive decision that we were going back to the other place because if I didn't eat soon, I'd be gnawing off my arm - it was almost 3 p.m.

Lunch was fantastic - I had some shepard's pie type meal, and we were sitting by a small lake that overlooked all the other countries. Our waitress had been on the cruise we were heading out on the next day, so she offered suggestions. By the time we were done eating - the rain had subsided. So we wondered around and checked out all the countries and worked off lunch. It began to rain again around Norway, and we managed to find another ride just in time. :)

After all that, we stopped in a store, picked up some gifts for the kids and headed back to the hotel. Since we ate lunch so late, we decided to just do some appetizers at the Polynesian bar for dinner. My mom doesn't drink much anymore, so I asked if she was going to get anything to drink. "Yes, a daquiri." That sounded reasonable as I thumbed through the drink book. She continued, "And if they don't have that, a whiskey sour." Wow, go big or go home. I was fairly confident they'd have the daquiri. Which was good, since I couldn't carry my mom back to our room. The bartender also provided some cruise related tips. Apparently everyone has been on a Disney cruise. And with that we headed back out into the rain to trek back to our room.

Viking helmut I made mom try on, she was less than enthusiastic.

Vacation - Day One

Definitely a bit late on this, but I'm going to back up and post about the vacation.

The trip to Florida was entertaining. My mom had not been on a plane in 45 years. Needless to say, things have changed slightly and I'd done my best to prep her for air travel. Easy on/off shoes. Nothing scary in the carry on, etc. Um, she was pulled aside to be searched and her purse had to be searched too. We were insanely early to the DSM airport. After boarding the plane we sat at the jetbridge for an eternity. Eventually the captain told us there was something wrong with the plane and we had to de-board so they could fix it. Looking at the clock, the odds of us making our connection in STL - slim. Once the plane was fixed we were off and running, only half an hour late. Lucky for us, there were 16 people transferring from our flight to the Orlando flight so they held the plane. An added bonus - the connecting flight was closeby in St Louis.

Arriving in Orlando, we were thrilled to find out that our luggage even made the flight. Woo Hoo!!! The travel agency transferred us to the hotel, where we checked in with the Polynesian hotel and then had to check in with travel agency and cruise line. Which would have been awesome, if I had the paperwork that was in the baggage below the bus. So once that was delivered I completed our check in and took a nap. After my mom told me she had decided to leave her cigarrettes at home (in an attempt to drive me crazy) she announced she was going for a walk. The idea of my mom not bringing cigarrettes along in theory is great. I would love for her to quit, but I knew we'd get on each other's nerves easily and her not smoking would not help.

photo of the Grand Floridain

After my nap, it was time to get ready for dinner which was being held on the beach at the Grand Floridian. Dinner was a pirate themed event. Some of the stuff included: pirate band, temporary tatoos for everyone, pirate moustaches. face painting, pirate gear for the kids, appearances by Mickey and Minnie. Due to the fact that I don't talk about work here, I won't be mentioning the people that were there. I liked all of them very much, but I don't want to get into any of that stuff. The food and drinks were great. Afterward, my mom and I headed back to the room to catch the fireworks and call it a night.

fireworks from our room