What Thanksgiving Means to Me...

Family & Stuffing.

That's it. That's Thanksgiving. Having my family around & having the family recipe for stuffing.

My grandmother's stuffing as interpreted by my Dad because we don't have a written recipe.

Its not put in the bird (yuk), its not gourmet with hard to find ingredients and special seasonings. It's a meal unto itself and it's Thanksgiving to me.

I'm glad I had my sous chef to help me make it for this year's Thanksgiving dinner.

And now, I am going to document the family recipe. Of course, you will note that there are no measurements. There is no specific amount to put in, you just eyeball it.

First ingredient: Cornbread. I used two packages for the base of the stuffing. I live in the north and there is an abundance of corn muffins. Regular cornbread mix is hard to find so I had to go with the corn muffin mix. It has more sugar than the regular cornbread mix.

My sous chef mixed the cornbread and then I poured it into my pre-heated cast-iron skillet and baked it.

The finished cornbread.

While the cornbread was baking, I boiled some eggs.

And Chloe helped me chop some celery, onions, sage, jalapenos and garlic.

Oliver wanted in on the action. He actually just wanted to play with the measuring spoons and eat a boiled egg.

We then gathered the next two ingredients, chicken broth and a whole chicken. I used a store bought because I am lazy. Chloe and tore apart the chicken.

We added the chicken to the other ingredients.

I then took the cooled cornbread and crumbled it in the baking pan. Fancy pan, I know.

I then added in the rest of the ingredients and a little salt and pepper. After it was well mixed I poured the chicken broth over to make it moist.  I baked mine at 375 until browned.

Yum!!! I always have an obligatory piece of turkey, some potatoes, a vegetable and a huge, heaping helping of stuffing.

The Ugly Side of Fall

One of the three piles of leaves outside our house. This one is pretty tame. Most piles also have tree limbs (from Snowtober), mums, and discarded hay bales from fall decorations in them. Its a mess.



The leaves are dropping swiftly now. Only a few more trees hold on to their leaves which means that there are huge piles lining the roadways making it impossible for more than one car to pass through. I am sure it is a daunting task for the clean up crews to remove all the leaves from the streets, but it seems like they have just thrown their hands  up this year and declared defeat. Most years the first snow fall comes before all the leaves are removed making the roads messy and nearly impassable. I expect this year to be no different.

Chloe upset that Oliver is destroying her leaf pile.

Oliver "helping" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

 Of course, two people I know like the piles of leaves. We'll see if this keeps up when they are in their teens and it is one of their jobs to clear the yard of leaves. Right now though, they love to rake. Chloe loves making piles and romping through it. Oliver loves to destroy the pile of leaves and send the leaves swirling around the streets and neighbors houses.

Playing with Daddy on a warm, fall day. And just a note, our yard had been completely cleared of any and all leaves just a few hours before hand. Look at it---leaves everywhere.

I have also been busy baking. Somehow I am perpetually on the bake sale committee every year at Chloe's school. Matt "volunteered" me when Chloe was in kindergarten and since I get an email in the fall and again in the spring telling me to bake something and drop it off at the bake sale chairs house. The fall bake sale is always the Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. I don't mind doing it, but its just an added stress to bake all these goodies when you are also the one who cooks Thanksgiving dinner.  And, of course I always channel my inner Martha and plan something a)containing tons of ingredients--none of which can contain nuts or processed in a nut factory---the rules of the bake sale and it makes for a long time reading labels b) requires assembly c) contains hard to find special ingredients.

Why do I do this to myself? Why can't I just bake sugar cookies? Anway, my great plans included turkey cake pops, "pumpkin" cupcakes, M&M cookies on a stick and chocolate mini loaves. Two out of three came out as planned. One didn't happen at all (cake pops). The ingredients were to hard to find. I went to two specialty cooking shops and one specialty grocery store before finding all the ingredients for the "pumpkin" cupcakes---and they are just cake, icing, orange sugar crystals and green fruit roll ups. How hard could that be? HARD apparently.

I've learned a valuable lesson---even though I live in the shadow of the largest city in the U.S., no one bakes here. There are specialty bake shops in NYC, but they didn't have all the ingredients. I did find one specialty shop that carried everything for all of my bake sale wish list---but they were in a small town on the NJ/PA border. Most of the stores in our area have their Christmas baking items out and have clearanced their fall baking items and its not even Thanksgiving yet!  I was so worn out that I gave up searching for all the candy parts needed for the cake pops---too difficult to find it all.  In the end, this is how it turned out....

The "pumpkin" cupcakes. I guess I should have started searching for orange sugar crystals and orange food coloring back in August. And green fruit roll ups don't exist. The fruit roll up stems were an improvisation---lets just say blue and yellow make green.

Popsicle sticks for the cookies---good luck finding those. In the end I just made giant cookies.

It was Oliver who reminded me, it all eats the same anyway....

Enjoying his M&M sugar cookie sans popsicle stick.

Crayola Factory

I took the kids to the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA yesterday. It was on our summer to do list and we never got around to it. Chloe was super-excited to go, though she started complaining about the distance about half way through our hour long trip.

The factory itself is not really the factory and you don't really learn about making crayons. I thought there would be exhibits about crayon making, etc., but the place is more of a homage to crayons and all the cool crafts you can make using all of Crayola's products---which my kids were totally not interested in. They know what crayons can do and they weren't about to sit down after being in a car for an hour and make a craft. Here's our tour in a nutshell:

• Wanna make an owl puppet using Crayola school glue? NO!
• Want to use the modeling clay to make a sculpture? NO!
• Want to use crayons to color the picture of the leaves? NO!
• Want to use the sidewalk chalk to color on the floor? NO!
• Want to run like wild banshees through the building? YES!

Getting my two to sit down and create something just for the sake of making something? Not going to happen. They could do that at home. There were some exhibits and activities they did like---using the two coins given to you at the Crayola vending machines for a glow in the dark marker, writing on the glass wall using Crayola dry erase markers, the color dance wall and of course, the Crayola Factory gift shop where you could find every Crayola product ever made.

The trip wasn't a total bust as you also get admission to the Canal Museum along with the Crayola Factory tour. My kids loved the Canal Museum. You get to learn about canals by helping a canal boat go through the locks and dams in a small scale creation of a canal. I didn't get a photo of them learning about locks and dams as I was too bust trying to help Oliver get his boat through the locks and not flood the entire place out.
The Canal Museum was definitely the highlight and was lots of fun and both Chloe and Oliver loved it. There are also lots of other hands on activities with water, canal building, building blocks, etc. which I did manage to photograph.



Chloe at the entrance to the "factory".




In the Canal Museum learning about water flow, canals and dams.




Building blocks in the canal museum.




Chloe with the world's largest crayon!



Not Sure What I Was Thinking

Last year I paid a professional photographer to take photos of the kids. The editing and proofing process took a really long time and I wanted to use the photos for Christmas cards. The entire thing stressed me out so I thought that Iwould take the photos this year since I have a nice DSLR camera and there are some great spots outdoors to snap photos. It all worked out in my mind....

Today was a beautiful day and there is no school the rest of this week. This morning, I set out to get the kids dressed and ready but it all went terribly wrong when I wiped a certain toddler's face. What followed was a 1 hour temper tantrum and rage-enduced vomiting.

Later in the afternoon, everyone seemed to be in better spirits so I got the kids ready and headed out the door to our favorite outdoor photo spot in a nearby county park. In other words, the same location our professional photographer took us to last year. Upon arriving at the county park, we discovered that there was lots of damage from last week's noreaster and much of the park was off limits, including our photo spot. So, I went to another county park a couple of miles away. I managed to snap a few photos before my DSLR decided to stop working. Unfortunately, most of the photos were of Chloe, who sat nicely for the photos. Oliver was already covered in dirt before we even took the first photo.

Hopefully, Matt can figure out what is wrong with my camera and we can make a second attempt at Christmas card photos. If not, looks like I will be making an appointment with a professional photographer.

In the meantime, I leave you with the best of what I got today.

Chloe--she listens and sits and smiles while Oliver runs amuck.

I managed to snap this as Oliver was walking by to throw rocks. He is NOT posing believe it or not.

I'm thinking that this photo may be the Christmas card winner. It's just not what I imagined I wanted though.

So Oliver. He's showing me some rocks he just picked up. I so wanted to get the kids outfits in the photos because I think they are darling.

School Photos--2nd Grade

What Oliver Does at Chloe's Swim Meets

Do I sit and watch my sister and her team mates swim laps in a loud, giant room that's warm and smells like chlorine? PUH-LEASE!! I'm two! I don't sit in the bleachers and cheer...I want to play.

Thank heavens for YMCA's and their playgrounds.
Here's a video of Chloe at the swim meet. This is the relay and there are four swimmers, of which Chloe is the anchor (last) swimmer. Of course, Matt and I didn't know that and you can hear us debating which swimmer is Chloe from the parent bleachers high above the action. Her group is in the lane on the far left of the screen. You can tell from the video that Chloe's swim team needs to work on their starts from the block--the relay was lost from the very beginning. But, Chloe loves relay and thinks it is so much fun!

Ollie

As I pulled into the pre-school parking lot, I was still on cloud nine, thinking of my sweet Oliver, who just a few hours before at drop off had given me a big bear hug and yelled out, "Mommy, kiss me!" with his arms open wide. So sweet. Then I walked in the door to see my boy and he threw a toy dump truck at me, knocking me right off that cloud. He wasn't trying to injure me and he wasn't mad at me. He was excited to see me walk in the door and hurling a dump truck was how he showed it (FYI: he tackles his sister when he is excited to see her come out of school each day).

Oliver brought this home from school today. It was supposed to be for the Halloween party, but that was canceled thanks to the snow storm. So cute!!

Chloe had a play date this afternoon and it was just Oliver and I. He wasn't too happy about Chloe not being around so we played downstairs with the train table. I'm not sure which he likes better, pushing the train on the tracks or dismantling the tracks.

Nap Time

I put Oliver down fully clothed. This is how I found him when I went to check on him about an hour after I laid him in his crib.



His shirt is off. His socks are on his hands and his shoes are on his feet.









What a crazy little guy!!

More of a Trick than a Treat

The kids are super excited about Halloween despite the recent events. There was no school today and the town has put a curfew out for this evening. No children out after dark because of the downed trees and power lines. We just had our first trick or treaters at 3 p.m. and they weren't little, little kids either.

I took advantage of having both kids at home today by draping a white sheet and taking some photos of them in their Halloween costumes.

Chloe keeps asking when it will be time to go trick or treating. She is so excited and I am worried that it could be a giant disappointment since many around us are still without power.

It does seem like it will be an early night since there will be no ringing of the doorbell after dark. Good thing that Cars 2 was just released today and I have it on DVD!!

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Snow-tober

Isn't it still fall? What's this white stuff falling from the sky? What started out as a laugh--snow in October became a nightmare.

The snow wasn't a total surprise. Weathermen in the NYC area said that we would get 3-6" of snow but that it wouldn't stick to the roadways. They were wrong. The snow came and fell fast. It was a white out and it was wet, heavy snow that stuck to the trees and caused many to topple over into power lines, houses and roadways.

Chloe had a swim meet about 20 miles away on Saturday. I kissed her goodbye and loaded her on the bus with the rest of the swim team just as the snow began to fall. Matt was in W. Virginia racing for the weekend and he had my SUV. I had the 911 turbo. I don't care what the clever P*orsche commercial says about it being all-wheel drive and a "snowmobile", it's not.

I headed out to watch Chloe swim and as soon as I got on the highway I knew it was bad. I called our Y and asked if the swim meet had been canceled and the bus turned around. It hadn't. Cut to the chase...I was in super freak out mode. Cars were sliding all over the highway, trees were falling on the highway and it was quickly becoming bumper cars as people were crashing into one another. I made the decision to turn around after a tree fell into a road blocking any further progression. It wasn't until 2.5 hours after Chloe left on the bus that I received a call that she was ok and the swim meet was canceled (duh). I wasn't back home yet so I headed to the Y to wait for Chloe's bus.

Chloe and I made it back to our house safely, despite dodging the fallen trees and downed power lines, to discover our power was out. I made dinner by flashlight---thank goodness for gas stoves! It was getting cold in the house since we had no heat and we made a fire in the fireplace. The kids played on the iPad until it ran out of battery power and then we broke out the cards. It was a nice evening until the house filled with smoke and the fire department showed up. It was  nice to know that our security system can still call for help even when the power is out. We had three firemen (in the yellow firetruck!) and a police officer wandering our house checking the carbon monoxide levels (which were ok) and debating why our chimney wasn't drafting. After an hour of debate, they threw a D*uraflame on the fire to make it burn hot and all was well. Until they showedd up an hour later---it was just to check in and see we were still doing ok. Yea, we live in a nice town where firefighters come by to check in.

We slept under lots of covers listening to the tunes of police cars heading to downed power lines and the "chirp chirp" of all of our safety devices alerting us that the battery power was low. All was right with the world Sunday as the snow began to melt and our power returned about 24 hours after it went off. Matt returned safely later in the evening.

A fall landscape covered in snow.

I inadvertently took this picture of myself while I was trying to answer the phone hoping it was one of the swim coaches to tell me Chloe was ok. You can see the amount of snow falling from the window.

The kids eating and playing in front of the fire.

The fire that cause us so much grief.

Oliver in the dark.

Chloe in the dark.

Many are still without power and school will be closed on Halloween. Chloe's school has two trees down in the front, one on the power line. This is not a Halloween we will soon forget.