Much-needed update

Where do I begin? It's hard to know, especially since I've been such a slacker with posting. We had a great time with Grandma Mary Ellen when she was here over Thanksgiving. My food turned out beautifully if I do say so myself. (I did forget the rolls and the corn, but we had so much other food that I really don't think they were missed.) For a vegetarian, I sure can cook a turkey! I brined the turkey in a Williams-Sonoma brine for 24 hours before roasting and it received rave reviews from Zach, Mary Ellen, and Jean. It did smell good, so I hope they weren't just being nice. My favorite things were probably the pumpkin soup and the pumpkin cheesecake tarts. Those recipes are definitely keepers.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, Zach and I went to the water park to celebrate a friend's daughter's birthday. We left the little man at home so we could ride all the big kid rides. I was nervous that the park would be crowded because it was a holiday weekend, but I forgot that Black Friday is the real holiday out here. The exit lane for the outlet mall was about 100 cars long. No thank you! Zach and I rode all the rides and had a great time.
On Saturday, we took Mary Ellen and Jean to the farmer's market. Besides locally-grown produce, the market has a lot of hot and prepared food, so we shared fried green tomatoes, beignets with lilikoi sauce, ginger ale, roasting ears, and tomato-pesto pizza. And we bought our fruits and veggies for the week!

Then on Sunday, we headed to the USS Arizona Memorial (Pearl Harbor). Zach and I hadn't been there in years, so it was nice to visit with our out-of-town guests. Daniel seemed to enjoy his first-ever boat ride and he was even pretty quiet on the memorial. I was really bad about taking pictures all weekend long, but Jean was snapping away so we're going to head to Walgreens to get her pictures put on a disk.

Mary Ellen had to make the long trip back to Buffalo on Tuesday and we miss her! I've been back at work all week and it's going okay. I think I picked a good time to come back because things are pretty slow in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I miss Daniel terribly during the day, but I know he is in very good hands. Thank you, Jean, I don't know if I could have done this without you.

Daniel, concentrating very hard on a new toy: