Scenes from Turkey Day

Happy Black Friday everyone!  I hope you all had a really nice Thanksgiving! Personally, I’m still at home in my bathrobe and preparing to eat pie for breakfast while NOT out shopping, though I actually do intend to head out later to pick up a few new Christmas decorations.  Wish me luck! :)

This has been a weird week, and it’s all just proof that you can’t put LIFE on hold until the holidays pass over. There’s been some important lesson-learning going on around here, and I’ll give some more details on all that next week. But for now, a few photos from our lovely time at Matthew’s parent’s house yesterday, where we had lots of fun doing Thanksgiving-y things like chatting it up with aunts and uncles and cousins and stuffing our faces with way too much food...

Stay safe this weekend, my friends! 

       

Why no, that wasn’t a 300 lb man’s plate.  See name card in background.

 

PS – Edd has gained a bit of strength, but he’s still in the hospital.  My mom wrote a very touching post that will help you understand a little of what’s going on right now.  They’re still figuring out what the future will look like now, and continued prayers are appreciated.

PPS – If I owe you an email, it’s coming!  Sometimes real life gets in the way of the Internet, which is always unfortunate and highly inconvenient.  This issue will be rectified shortly.

Outfit & Happy Turkey Day!

 Shirt and pants: J.Crew (shirt here, pants here), cardigan: Banana Republic, scarf: made by Matthew’s grandma!, bracelets: F21, boots: Target (find them here)

 

Matthew said I look like Mr. Rogers in this sweater—isn’t that nice?  :P

I’m not quite sure I’ll have time to post again before Thanksgiving, and right now there are so many thoughts swirling in my head that I’m having trouble pinning any one of them down to “paper.”  But I just wanted to wish you all a really, really nice holiday.  I’m SO looking forward to squeezing people close this week, and letting go of things that don’t matter, and loving on my husband and my puppies, and eating some yummy food.  There is always, always, always so much to be thankful for.   

LOVE YOU PEOPLE!  Have a happy Turkey Day! :)

Home Sweet, Sweet Home

Hello dearies, and how I have missed you!!!  I doubt very many of you escaped a bit of chaos this last week, but I sincerely hope that in all of the family dramas and frenzied preparations and muddled travel plans there was still plenty of thankfulness and JOY.  :)

I know MY week wasn't without incident (three hour delay at the airport, a missed connection flight, and a return trip home from HELL as I simultaneously battled a migraine AND sat directly in front of The Four Year Old Spawn of Satan Himself as he screamed, squealed, whined, wailed, kicked my seat constantly, reached forward and continuously poked me, and played his Leapster on full blast THE ENTIRE THREE HOUR FLIGHT all while his Idiot Mother sat idly by, acting as if this type of degenerate behavior was entirely normal and no one should be bothered by it). 

First thing Monday I'm scheduling Matthew's vasectomy. 

But anyway.  It WAS a wonderful and relaxing week with family, and while it turned out that it snowed very little, I still enjoyed the chilly weather and made time for plenty of fabulous pictures! 

Here's a little sampling from the week, courtesy of my delicious new camera...

Enjoy! (and remember: I am now on Twitter!  Come and follow me!!!) :) :) :)


People...

Handsome husband

Matthew's sis and her son Cameron

Matt's brother and his girlfriend

Me and Matt's Aunt Katherine (who is barely older than him!)

Me and my lil buddy!

 Matt's "real" mom - he has two moms, for those of you who may be confused!

Matt's stepdad Glenn

SNOW!!!!!!

Food...

 Photo shoot...

It's Possible That I Might Die of Hypothermia or Gangrene...

Hello beautiful people!!!

I am coming at you live from the Frozen World of Wisconsin where the highest high this week is 36 degrees, and the lowest low is 15!!!!  What is a Texas girl to do?!?! 

Actually, I am loving it.  It's in the 70's and 80's back home, which somehow doesn't get you feeling very festive!  We're expecting some snow here in the next couple days, and you BETTER BELIEVE there will be photos taken of me licking lamposts and such. And I will be sure to share any good ones with you fine folks after I get home.

But for now, since for some reason my laptop (which contains my entire life and all the photos I've been wanting to share with you) isn't connecting to the wi-fi here (booooo), I'll just leave you with a link so you can head on over to Sarah Ann's lovely blog Bon Mot where I've been featured and interviewed as her favorite of the week!!!  Woo hoooo!!!  And then be sure and make friends with Sarah... she is super cool!!

Have a beautiful and perfect week, my friends.  I cannot wait to get home and catch up on all your blogs! I'm starting to get a little irritable as this "family time" and these "holidays" and this "vacation" is eating into my blogging time. Priorities, people. Priorities. ;)

via

76-Second Travel Show: "Pilgrim Hats, They Real?"

Episode #010
F E A T U R I N G * 2 2 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

NO BUCKLE PLEASE

Americans celebrate the country's greatest holiday this week, and one must ask, again, with a sigh, about pilgrim hats. What were they called, did pilgrims at the famed 1621 picnic with the Wampanoag really wear them, how can I get one?

My Google searches found surprisingly little other than a video tutorial how to make one. And, out on the streets, walking the aisles of Wal Mart, Walgreen's, CVS in Oklahoma City, I discovered even less: despite Thanksgiving's enduring lure for American families, you'll find no pilgrim hats sandwiched between Halloween left-overs or Christmas ornaments and fake reindeer.

Apparently the pilgrim hats as we know them stem from the Spanish "capotain" or "sugar-loaf," so hip to men and women of London in the mid 1600s. And to Puritans wanting to look fussed up at Sunday meetings.

They looked fetching, but weren't very practical. Transforming a beaver pelt into one was laborious and buying one was expensive. In a wonderful 1896 New York Times article called "The Hats Men Wore," a quote from the 17th century lashes out on a felt hat called the "sugar-loaf." The writer complains the hats are "so incommodious... that every puffe of wind deprived us of them, requiring the employment of one hand to keep them on."

--> "Incommodious" means "inconvenient." Don't feel bad. I didn't know it
either.

Strong 'puffes of wind' certainly were aplenty in Plymouth, Mass, the alleged site of the first Thanksgiving. And this painting of the event  suggests pilgrims weren't that into hats afterall. At least not during cross-cultural feasts. 

Peggy Baker of the Pilgrim Hall -- in Plymouth -- told me today that the hats wouldn't have had buckles ("those came in the 1670s, and were a short-lived trend") and that they were worn on Sunday meetings only. (Pilgrim Hall actually has the only existing pilgrim hat -- a beige, buckle-free one worn in the 1640s by a woman named Constance Hopkins Snow.)

The '76-Second Travel Show' doesn't know what to think about pilgrim hats. Just that Thanksgiving -- its lack of Christmas-esque gift-giving tension, focus on family and football -- is worth the time, regardless of what hat you wear. Just as long as the hat has no buckles.

This week's episode was filmed in one continuous shot in Oklahoma City's Stockyards.