Thanksgiving-in-a-Box

 

Well here it is in the back of the car, our Thanksgiving dinner.  It's not all of it, of course.  But given our difficulty with the oven of late, this back-up plan from Cracker Barrel is pretty cool.  It's essentially Thanksgiving-in-a-box, a collection of foods that we'll have to cook in the toaster oven tomorrow, but in much more manageable sizes.  It'll be a full day of cooking tomorrow, as most of these take roughly an hour to cook.  It's a neat box though, isn't it?  There's another box with a pie in it behind the box, but inside you have those two turkey portions, plus the rolls on top, and then below that there are several tins with stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and all the other usual items of Thanksgiving.  While we were there, of course we did a little looking around, and a little Christmas shopping too!

Today was the big day for Gobble the turkey, making his proud appearance at the White House for an official pardon from the President.

His buddy Waddle also received a pardon.  Earlier, I thought his companion's name was "Wattle," which is a thing for a turkey.  But in fact, his name is "Waddle."  As evidence of this, Waddle in fact must have waddled off the premises, because he wasn't there in person for the official pardon, though he was in fact pardoned. 

Slowly but surely, the decorations are going up at the church!  We've got some Christmas trees up and there are lights too.  The main sanctuary looks very nice for the season.

And these old friends are back, the lights suspended from the ceiling.  We've had these pretty much since the beginning of this new building, so yes, something like twenty years.  It's quite a process getting those hung up.

And of course KidPak is starting to get some decorations too.  Here's the snowman from last year, along with the flakes and trees.  We'll see how things progress.  I was there a little today to get some files, but I've been somewhat under the weather lately.  I'm still taking my prescription from the doctor, but it's been a fairly relentless cough and stuffiness.  I miss my sense of smell!  It's so weird not being able to smell or taste anything!

Maddie just obliterated a puzzle today and yesterday.  It was 750 pieces, and she just got obsessed about it, maybe because we told her we only had a few days until we needed to put up the little table and make room for Thanksgiving.  So she got busy on this one, listening to music and plugging away at a "Beauty and the Beast" puzzle.

Sadly, there's no Forte in this puzzle!  As a consolation, there was one bonus piece - it's a 751-piece puzzle.  Although one of the pieces was just a duplicate.  Yes, we found out where the identical piece went once the thing was all put together.  It's up at the top right somewhere in the picture.

Moving on, we got a lot of grocery shopping in today, picking up items for Thanksgiving - and Christmas too.  I even went back to the grocery store again later on to get some other things.  Lots of prep work in the holiday season!

But wow, it's raining outside.  Downpour.  We need it, of course, but it's no fun driving in.  I made it home safely, and after that we all sat down to watch "Home Alone" again in the living room.  We had some time afterwards, so we watched "Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special" after that too.  But tomorrow's a big day for cooking and everyone needs rest - we headed up to bed after that.  We read some more from "Hogfather," where Susan is finding out what her grandfather is up to, which of course is great fun.  We said our prayers after that, and then it was time for some sleep!