Turkey-Lurky Loo

Turkey, family, turkey, family, pie, shopping, family, football, family, party, running, sleep.

Busy, busy, busy.

Who needs a vacation from your holiday?  It can't only be me. 

I think that marks a good holiday- when you need a vacation after its over.

I had a wonderful weekend with lots of food, family, football and fun, with a side helping if shopping and running. Like most of you, we spent the last week eating, baking and being with family and friends.  It was so lovely.

With all that going on, there was no time to blog or even check in.  I hope you all were too busy to notice that I hadn't updated in forever.

Since both of our families are local, we split Thanksgiving in half and spend time with both.  Over the years, we have learned how to stretch our stomachs so we can happily eat both dinners.  I also have learned to take it easy on both dinners, whereas Chris (who never learns) eats with reckless abandon (even getting seconds). He is the epitome of "go big or go home."

We weren't very productive on the home front over the weekend, although we were able to get one very important thing done: raking the leaves.

Don't underestimate this accomplishment.  I know it doesn't sound impressive, but you are going to have to trust me on this one.

We have a ton of trees out front of our house and with the windy weather we have been having lately, all our leaves dropped at the same time.  Then it rained. So the leaves got layered on top of each other, then glued together, the walked on, then blown by the wind.

We had leaves literally caked onto our sidewalk, grass, flower beds and parking strip.  It was like leaf glue, stuck on everything.

This is the first time I regretted buying the small rake (why do I have to be so cheap??). 

We spent 3 hours raking, shoveling and sweeping.  In the pouring rain, mind you.  It is incredible how much better it looked after we were done.  I am sure our neighbors are appreciative that we finally cleaned up our yard. We actually had a few come over to say hi and they mentioned they were wondering when we were going to get around to raking.....as if we were the only people on the block with a leafy yard.

I was so intent on getting the yard cleaned up, trying to stay dry and chatting up the neighbors that I failed to take pictures of before and after.  Just imagine a huge pile of leaves.  Then double it.  Then you will have a pretty accurate mental picture.

Let me tell you, by time we were all done, showered and sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner, I was STARVING!  Nothing like actually "working" up an appetite.

When we arrived at our second dinner, I was about 85% full, but still looking forward to dessert.

I made pumpkin and apple pie for dessert, and when I was trying to figure out what to do for the apple pie crust, my mother in law suggested that I do fall leaves on top.  Without a leaf cookie cutter, I had to improvise.

My cousin, Sammy, and I ran outside and plucked a leaf from the ivy that was growing in the front yard and decided to make our own leaf pattern.

Don't worry we washed the leaf really well
My job was to make the veins in the leaves
We layered the leaves on top of each other to create the top crust.  It was so lovely, and delicious- again I forgot to snap a picture.  That, and with wine in one hand and pie in the other- there was no hands left for camera snapping. Priorities people.

After we finished our dessert, we headed out to do a little midnight black Friday shopping.  Sammy had never gone black Friday shopping, so I thought I would show her the ropes.  We spent a good portion of our night reviewing all the ads, making lists and planning our route.

We actually only had two stores to hit, Best Buy and Macy's.  We headed out around 11pm to get in line.

Apparently we didn't get the memo that we needed to skip Thanksgiving all together and line up for 14 hours.  I am not willing to give up my family time for deals, but a heck of a lot of people are! When we pulled up to Best Buy, there was roughly 800-1000 people in line.  I kid you not.  Sammy was in awe.  She couldn't believe how many people who came out for their deals.  There is no TV I want bad enough to stand in line for 16 hours in the cold and miss dinner with my family.

So we headed over to Macy's where there was about 20 people in line, and strolled right in at midnight. Sammy snagged some cute boots and we marveled at the crazy people who were running to get the $19 pleather boots.  Seriously crazy-pants.

We headed back to Best Buy around 1 am to see if they had anything left.  We didn't even get into the parking lot when we realized that there was still a line of hundreds of people waiting to get in.  We promptly got back in the car and went home. I didn't even buy anything. 

I got over my buyers disappointment quite quickly when we headed to the annual in-state football rivalry game- the Apple Cup, where our favorite team won!

Go Dawgs- with Chris Polk eye-black
We partied the night away celebrating our win, then I woke up nice and early (5:45am) to head down to cheer on my friend Lauren and sister Chelsey who were running the Seattle 1/2 marathon.

Winners!
They both ran the half like champs!  So proud of them, wish I could have run it with them.  Maybe next year.

So there you have it.  Food, family, football, baking, raking, shopping, running.

Hope you need a vacation from your weekend too.

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