A Weekend of Thanks...

Well, tonight wraps up a glorious 4-day holiday weekend with Ron at our side the entire time. Ever since he went back to school in late June, this has been a rare thing for Lia and I to have him around for this many days in a row. Pathetic, I know. So, were we ever grateful to start off our weekend of thanksgiving with that additional blessing. Plus, we were able to celebrate Thanksgiving in Seattle with my family for the first time (for me) since 2001! That makes eight years that I have been in a different state or even county. We loved not having to fly on the busiest travel weekend of the year. No lines, delayed flights, lost luggage, no nothing! Here are the highlights of the weekend:

Thanksgiving dinner was held at my parents' house with several family members in attendance. Although many members of the family contributed to the dinner, my mother made over half of it herself and came through with flying colors (which is no surprise). Here is my mom, SIL Natalee, and Aunt Sharon bustling around the kitchen during the final, frantic minutes before dinner. I am helping out by taking pictures...

My SIL Rebecca, brother Tip, hubby Ron, and three nieces playing games in the family room while awaiting the meal.

One of the tables decked out in its Thanksgiving splendor in the dining room. Martha would be proud, mom.

In keeping up with being the closest to perfect that a toddler can be, Lia obediently took her daily nap before, during, and after the Thanksgiving dinner. By doing so, Lia kept on schedule and allowed her parents the freedom to enjoy their holiday dinner in peace. It's hard work being perfect, but she manages to do it somehow. Here she is bossing Ron around while most anxiously consuming her turkey dinner after the rest of us have long since finished.

I volunteered to make four pies from SCRATCH (yes, dough and all) as my assignment for dinner. I made two pumpkin, one apple, and one banana cream pie. I did this in order to further my progress in accomplishing the goal of becoming more like my mother.

The full-belly family.

On Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, we decided to go on a little family outing in order to, one, avoid the malls and, two, take advantage of some sunshine peaking through the clouds. We ventured out and explored a new beach on the Puget Sound in Tacoma called Owen Beach (thanks, Sarah, for the directions) for an hour or so before stopping for salmon wraps and salmon chowder (delish!) at this adorable seafood shop on the way out. Here is Ron, Lia, and my shadow basking in the sunshine.

Lia in repose...

Quite possibly the world's most adorable toddler...

On our way home, we made a spontaneous stop at the grocery store to pick out our Christmas tree from the freshly arrived stock of trees. Since we have never been home on Thanksgiving weekend as a married couple, we have never purchased our tree this early in the season. However, we realized with Ron's busy work-school and university-school schedule, that this was the opportune weekend to do it! So, we carpe diemed and bought one. And, I know, I know, we DO live in the world of U-Cut Christmas tree farms, but we had a bad experience with one our first year living here and are now completely content with buying our 6-foot Douglas Fir at Top Food Grocery Store for a bargain $19.97 each year.

Ron unloading the tree from the car!

Friday night, while Ron worked, Lia helped me decorate the Christmas tree with lights and ornaments. As one would imagine, she was absolutely mesmerized by the entire process and never left the room. I managed to photograph the most precious moment of the evening that I think captures some of the magic of Christmas. While I was stringing the lights around the tree, I found Lia on the landing of our stairs where she was trying to feed the other end of the lights through the railings and onto the tree! What a little Santa's helper.

Of all the "ormanents" (as Lia fondly calls them), she was most fascinated with this little birdie and its accompanying nest. She carried it around and played with it for several minutes before finally helping me place it on a lower bough in the tree. Here she is on the ground playing with her new found friend.

Putting the birdie in the nest.

Ron and I wrapped up the highlights of our holiday weekend with an actual date on Saturday. Gasp, I know. This kind of thing unfortunately does not happen as much as it should in the Hartland. However, thanks to our favorite YW, Paige, who is 17-going-on-30 and the free babysitting she owed us for the proofreading of two English papers, we were able to slip out of the home for almost six hours! I'm embarrassed to admit that I dragged Ron to New Moon for the first half of the date (I have a love-hate relationship with Stephenie Meyer and her books for a couple of reasons that I won't get into) where he managed to survive the film and its endless scenes of shirtless men. We then finished off the day with a trip to the fabulous Asian strip mall we found in August while his mother was visiting. We feasted on Filipino food, sipped Vietnamese avocado shakes, purchased enough Pan de Ube at the Filipino bakery to feed an army, and happily wandered the miles and miles of highly entertaining and equally fascinating aisles of the Asian grocery store. Pictured above, you will find me and our cart in the aisle devoted ENTIRELY to sauces. Can you even imagine an entire aisle in a grocery store devoted to everything sauce under the sun?! Fish sauce, soy sauce, chili sauce, oyster sauce, banana sauce, bean sauce, BBQ sauce, and even some vinegar and shrimp and chili paste are all available for your enjoyment. I think I now finally understand why my husband absolutely insists on having some sort of sauce on everything we eat...

Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend!