Thanksgiving Fun

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with fun, family and games. Wednesday I went to my parents house to help clean up and get ready for guests. Peter came over after work and then Abbie, Rafe and their dog Ruby showed up around 6:30. They drove down from the bay area. Ruby is 13 and Gracie (my family's golden retriever) 6 played a bunch. It was funny to watch Ruby bump Gracie with her nose and then spring backward and want to play. Of course Gracie would play, but she had more energy than Ruby, so Ruby would end up leaving the game first. We had a fun evening. Thursday was Turkey Day! Peter volunteered to be in charge of the bird. He brined it(soaked it in water and herbs and stuff) and that made it nice and juicy when it cooked. It was great!

After dinner which was rather early, we all took a nap. Several of us were out for a long time, which made it easy for us to stay up until midnight playing games. Peter and I introduced my family to Apples to Apples, Scum, Pit and we introduced Nerts (which is hard to play with a lot of people) to Peter. We also played Disney Scene It #2. Peter was at the end first, but he missed the winning question and I caught up and beat him :) My mom and sister clearly lost.

Friday morning we made apple pancakes for my family. They are like German pancakes (you cook them in the oven and they fluff up) with apples in them. They are oh so good! Peter's great at making them, and I love them, so we eat them often. Then Abbie, Rafe, Peter and I headed out to La Jolla. We went to the Mangelsen Gallery where we bought a poster of a bear holding a fish. Thomas Mangelsen's most famous photo is called "Catch of the Day" it is of a brown bear standing over a waterfall and a fish jumps out of the water and is headed towards the bear's mouth. My dad has that poster in his office. After that we headed down to the children's pool and watched some cute critters.
At one point there were two divers in the water and they spooked the seals. I took a video clip, but it's not working on this site I keep getting error notes...arg. Basically it was the seals moving rather quickly across the beach. Peter referred to them as giant caterpillars.

It was also low tide, so we went down to the tide pools. Here we have a ton of mussels and a beautiful wave. Next is a dead crab. We think someone purposely put it there because the water was really shallow and it was missing a few parts...We made Rafe touch it to see if it was dead and then for the rest of the day we told him he had dead crab hands. There were also sea anemones everywhere!


Saturday morning we finally decorated our Christmas tree! Then did a little shopping and headed over to raid the fridge for the last remaining pieces of turkey. We had sandwiches and watched a movie.

My break from work was wonderful...I had a whole week off! I got a lot accomplished that I wanted to. I even got to play in my garden. I planted sweet pea seeds and started moving some plants around. My mom informed me that she wanted to turn one of my garden spaces into a cemented area and put a storage container to hide all of the grandkids' toys. This meant me moving some plants around. I started with the strawberries and boysenberries and moved them to the back of the yard where I have other boysenberry plants along the fence. I put the strawberries in front of some roses also in the back area. I still have a bunch of gerberas, carnations, and geraniums to move as well as a few others. However she doesn't plan on cementing the area until after Christmas, so I think I will leave some plants in there so we don't get a muddy area for Gracie to play in. Plus it looks nice with some plants there. I need to get some snap pea seeds into the ground soon, then I'll be all set.

On Tuesday my nephew Joshua-6, came to see what I was doing as I was pulling weeds in the front yard. He asked if he could help and then proceeded to grab giant hedge clippers. I told him he could help trim one plant back by cutting the brown parts. Well thanks to him and my own accidental chop the root in half, we ended up pulling that bush out. He turns to me and says, "Does grandma know you're doing this?" Me-"Well sort of." Joshua-"I think she's going to be mad that you took out her plant." Me-"Well you helped me." Joshua then gets the look of I'm in trouble on his face and then says, "I think I'll go inside now." I reassured him he wouldn't get in trouble and he stayed and helped me awhile longer. I later told my mom and she said she didn't notice the plant missing. There are several out there just like it and they have roots that run. So somewhere it will probably start up again if it hasn't already.