Thanksgiving

I am a traditionalist when it comes to holidays. I love holidays and I surely love traditions that surround those holidays.

My remembrances of Thanksgiving growing up of course center around food. I remember waking to the sound of my Daddy putting the gazillion-pound turkey into the oven at 4 in the morning. I'm not sure why it took so long to cook, but it did and it was always done around 2 p.m.

My family loved stuffing and so my Daddy made a HUGE batch of stuffing. Part of it made it into the bird (yes, this grosses out microbiologist Chris which means we don't do this in our own house, sniff, sniff-that's me crying) and part of it was left out for us to eat for breakfast.

You may think that's disgusting, but let me tell you that stuffing for breakfast is quite delicious...maybe it's just a Nielson thing, my sisters will definately agree with me!

When I woke up this Thanksgiving morning, my good husband had something waiting for me...

A big bowl of stuffing!!

O.K., that's not what it looked like in the morning, but there it is on our Thanksgiving table in the bowl that growing up we dubbed the stuffing bowl--I can't think of any other time that bowl was used,only for stuffing at Thanksgiving and Christmas!! I was lucky enough to inherit it! (Maybe not luck, I had to barter to get that bowl from my sisters:)

I love setting a formal table at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Out comes the china, and the silver I inherited from my parents and grandparents, the crystal Chris brought from his mission in the Czech Republic and I reminice about all the holidays past. Chris reminded me that he got in "trouble" at the Nielson household when he tried wearing a hat to dinner the first time we joined my family for Thanksgiving. Haha! That tells you something about Chris' dislike for formality and maybe something about me, too, perhaps it's my liking for things done a certain way, at least it tells you you'd better not wear a hat to a Nielson dinner!

Kierst made napkin ring holders to add a festive touch:


Here's the crew around the table: (yes, that's jellied cranberry sauce out of the can behind Kierst, another Nielson tradition--and perhaps to those with a less refined palate another acquired taste)

Can't take pics without Abs and Lisi being silly for the camera:

Lisi looks so much like my Daddy in this picture it's scary.

Lovin' that gigantic turkey leg!

Chris had to work on Thanksgiving, but was home early enough to put together a marvelous feast!

In the evening we had a few friends over for pie. Kierst made pilgrim hats for the kids who didn't want pie.

With what everyone brought we ended up with the traditional pumpkin (my favorite!), along with Stapley traditional pie like blueberry cream cheese and pumpkin chiffon, and a couple of apple, and a candy pie, and a couple of chocolate silk pies. Delicious! Not to mention a great time with friends. This may have to become a tradition at our house.

Friday I was up at 3 a.m. ready to hit Target. I am one of those weird ones who actually enjoys Black Friday, but you won't find me at ToysRUs or Best Buy! Why in the world is it always freezing cold?? Standing outside my teeth couldn't stop chattering! Is it worth it? I don't know, sometimes?, but it's become a tradition for me, it's always fun standing in line commiserating with all the other crazies!

The rest of the weekend for us is decorating for Christmas (yes, I love to go all out, if only I could convince Chris to risk life and limb in order to string lights on the second story of our house, haha!), interspersed with a few other activities like a trip this afternoon to see Megamind.

Now on to Christmas!

Czech Republic Revisited

The past couple of weeks I've been putting together photo books from our spring trip to the Czech Republic. These pics were taken with my point and shoot camera, oh, if I'd only had my good Nikon! I guess that means we have to go back haha! Most of these were edited in Lightroom-love that program. It was so much fun to look back on our trip that I had to share some of my favorites-some of these are new, others I've posted before.

My absolute two favorite pictures from the gardens at Buclovice chateau:

This one I barely touched up, it was cold and rainy and so the water shone perfectly off of the leaves

Prague, Stare Maesto, I love architecture so I have lots and lots of views of buildings!

Looking into Hraceny in Prague

Prague castle from the Charles Bridge

Gardens at Buclovice.

Prague, of course!This was taken out the window of our car driving in the countryside. It's such a typical view of the little Czech villages and I just loved it.

Tower in Stare Maesto
I think this is in Hraceny in Prague, I really can't remember.

One of the statues lining the Charles Bridge

Right by our hotel in Prague

At Karlstejn Castle

St. Vitus at Prague Castle

Prague

Ribbed vaulting at Prague Castle, like I said I'm an architecture junky.

Prague

Looking under the art noveau overhang of the municipal hall in Prague

Prague castle

Wall around Vysehrad

Archway under the buildings in Telc Castle ruins at Strakonice

Fall Trees

I love being surrounded by trees, but as I've lamented before, we don't have a lot of trees in our yard, nor do we have a lot of room to plant trees since our house sits on a pretty small lot. So when it came to landscaping we picked our trees very carefully. I really wanted a maple with lots of fall color to sit in the front yard, I've always liked the vibrant oranges and reds.

The one we picked is pretty amazing. It's not very big yet, but it's growing quickly. I can't remember the name (Chris could tell you, he can tell you almost every variety of tree out there) but I think it's Autumn Blaze. Its leaves don't turn until late October and it just started losing its leaves this weekend, which means almost an entire month of reddish-orange beauty. I love it.

The girls have enjoyed picking leaves and making leaf rubbings.
Our neighborhood added trees to every street last year and our house happened to be one that got one. I'm not sure what kind of maple it is, its a little different than our other one but its fall color is pretty incredible, too. In a few years it should be beautiful.

Halloween

With parties on Wednesday because of parent/teacher conferences, Halloween seemed to start early this week!

Abs wanted to be a cat for Halloween. She found the ears, mask and tail and I sewed the skirt to match.

Kierst at the school costume parade. She wanted to be a witch, so I reworked her vampire costume from last year and added witch trimmings. (A side note here: this costume caused a lot of headaches at our house, in short we made her pay 1/2 of the cost of materials and once her piggy bank started to deplete she quickly learned the value of a dollar).

Even though I'm the co-room mom for Kierst's class I didn't have to do anything for the party except help out, I love volunteers!

And what was Lisi doing while Kierst crafted a spooky bottle cap necklace?

Sitting in the back of the class with another 4 year old eating sugar cookies (notice the container behind her and the hand reaching for one).
I ran to Abs' class for the second half of the parties.
They're trying to figure out how to wrap a mummy.
Lisi felt left out of the candy corn race so she did her own.

She did join in on the spider craft.I don't think Abs was as excited about the craft as Lisi was, she's going to be a tween before we know it.

I love making sugar cookies, a few times a year that is, they can be a little labor intensive. Halloween is one of those times, so on Friday the girls and I rolled out lots of dough and cut out tombstones and cats, witch hats and bats, mummies and pumpkins and candy corns, then decorated them with a couple of friends. Kierst insisted on using frosting tips of course and their cookies got pretty creative, and pretty impressive, like Kierst's tie-dyed mummy (I forgot to take a pic) and Ab's Frankenstein.

Lisi did a good job too, she just happened to get a wee bit messier than everyone else, o.k., her shirt was covered in frosting by the end.

Saturday morning Kierst had a piano recital at a nursing home.

She played "King of the Mountain Hall," and did a great job.Friends from church take lessons from the same piano teacher.

In the afternoon we carved our pumpkins. Can you guess how much the girls like cats??
Kierst designed her own (the one in the middle) and Abs designed Lisi's (the one on the right).

I never know what Chris is going to carve from his pumpkin, he's always super creative (that's his on the left, mine is on the right and I took this 2 days after we did them, that's why the house is melting:)

Our church's trunk-or-treat and chili cook-off was that night.

Lisi had a traumatic evening with a bloody nose. Once the candy came out all was forgotten.

Our bishopric did a surprise "Ghostbusters" number, how can you not like a bishopric that likes to have fun?

Lisi and one of her preschool friends.

Lisi also wanted to be a cat for Halloween, and not just any one, a purple cat! Out came the sewing machine and costume #3 was finished in no time.

By Sunday Abs was so tired she fell asleep in our hearth room waiting for everyone else to change into their costumes.

Ready for trick-or-treating!

Every year our across-the-street neighbors have a chili dinner, everyone gathers to eat, then some stay to distribute candy while the rest of us take the kids around.

I don't have any pics from trick-or-treating, but we did have a great time, even though it was FREEZING (what happened to our beautiful weather??). Chris stayed with the younger ones like Abs who ran from house to house while I stayed a little behind with the older girls like Kierst. Lisi attached herself to one of Kierst's friends and figured out that if she dug enough through candy bowls she could usually score a kitkat-her favorite candy, I think she came home with a full pound of them. At one house Kierst got 5 Reese's pb cups (my fav) then graciously offered them all to me:) The biggest hit of the evening? The neighbor who pulled out a cotton candy machine! Well, with everyone except Lisi, who thought it was yucky.