I get this email every year, but I love it! In fact, I agree with it so much I’m posting it here. Enjoy!

HOLIDAY EATING TIPS

1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.

2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it’s rare. In fact, it’s even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can’t find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!

3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy . Eat the volcano. Repeat.

4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.

5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?

6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.

7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again.

8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?

9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.

10. One final tip: If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.

Just wanted to wish everyone a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving! There is so much horror in our world, I am grateful to have at least one day out of the year to just focus on blessings. I am grateful, most of all, for my Husband, my Children, and my Mother. Running a very close 2nd are all of my wonderful and amazing friends who have supported, comforted, and lifted me up in prayer over this past year. I would surely be in a padded cell by now, if it weren’t for them!

We are headed out in a couple of hours to our friend, Tiffany Galozzi’s home, where we are going to enjoy her wonderful cooking and hospitality. Woo Hoo! Then, tomorrow, we start decorating the house for Christmas, and finish the day up at the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert down in Greenville.

So, today I am going to start baking homemade rolls for Thanksgiving.  We are going to be at a friend’s home this year (Thanks, Tiffany!) so I don’t have to actually prepare the entire meal, which is so nice!  And, there will be about twelve people, so that will be really nice, too.  I really prefer Thanksgiving when there are a lot of folks to enjoy it with.

We are also going to be cleaning house today and tomorrow, because this weekend, we will be putting up all of our Christmas decorations!  So, I am thinking about the Holidays, and how fast they seem to be racing toward us.  It will all be here (and then gone!) before I know it.

Faith’s friend, Anamarie, said something the other day that really made me think. I have not looked forward to celebrating Christmas for a very long time, because it seems like we are always so short on money when it rolls around, no matter how much I’ve saved for it during the year.  (This year, for example, I have had to dump almost $1000 into my car in the past WEEK!  That was Christmas money.  Now, it’s just a painful memory. )

But, back to Anamarie.  I was driving the girls somewhere, and she pipes up in her adorable little twelve-year-old voice and says “I can’t wait for Christmas!”  And I said “Really?  Why?  What is it that you enjoy most about Christmas?”  I wasn’t being sarcastic in any way.  I really wanted to know.  Sometimes it is just so nice to get a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a child.  It’s almost always a nicer place than I tend to think it is. Well, she explained that she loves putting up the tree, and opening presents, and getting to go to both of her grandmother’s homes for more presents and for yummy food.  Hmm.  I remember feeling excited about those things.  It was a long, long time ago.  Somehow that excitement has gotten away from me over the years.

Okay, I don’t mean to be on a total downer here.  I am merely taking an honest assessment.  And, yes, I am very well aware of the fact that Christmas is not supposed to be about all that stuff, but that all of that stuff is supposed to be about Christmas.  The birth of the Savior of the world, the Christ Child.  And we do things every year to remind ourselves of that fact, to celebrate and focus on that meaning.  We light the Advent Candles every evening, and pray together as a family.  We go to Daily Mass more often, and we attend special church services.  We celebrate Wigilia, and go to Midnight Mass.  And don’t get me wrong:  I *LOVE* those things!  But I still find it very difficult to get in the mood when the time comes.

But this year, I am really going to try, really hard, to focus on the *spirit* of the season, and not worry about all the rest of it.  Yes, I would really love a big family Thanksgiving or Christmas, where all my family joined us and we had this wonderful time together, then all went to church together.  I would love to feel a sense of hopefulness about the future of our country.  I would love to think that our house is about to sell!   But none of those things are real.  What is real, though, is God, and the blessings that He has given us.  So, I am focusing on the blessings, and on being Thankful for them, as we Head for the Holidays.

Bumblebee Cupcakes

So I finally got around to uploading the pictures of Faith’s 12th Birthday party to my Flickr account, and no sooner had I finished than I got an invitation to join a Flickr Group called “Cupcakes Take The Cake”, due to the cute little Bumblebee Cupcakes I made for her party.

So, I checked out their group, and these ladies even have a blog (Also called “Cupcakes Take The Cake“, but located on Blogger, not Flickr!) all about cupcakes.  They are obviously far more focused than I will ever be!   Anyway, check ‘em out. . .they have some really awesome ideas.

And, if you think the cupcakes are cute, you really need to check out my Flickr account and check out the Beehive Cake, too.  That was really adorable!  All made from scratch, with lots of love!

There have been lots of times when money has been very tight for our family, and I have always found that the easiest way to trim our budget has been to save money on groceries.  It is so easy to blow several hundred a month at the grocery store on junk!  However, when I put my mind to it, I can limit our grocery bill (for six of us) to $200 or less.

Well, lately, with Gaylon being in Texas and us trying to become completely debt free once we sell our house, I’ve been trying to be extremely frugal.  So, last week, Alex and I went shopping and managed to come home with everything I needed to cook 30 meals (except for 1 box of quick-cooking barley) for $102.  Isn’t that cool?

We already had a few items, (canned chunk pineapple, spaghetti, potatoes, and so on) so next month our bill may go up $20 or $30, but still, to feed six people dinner for a month, that’s pretty amazing these days!  I grate my own cheeses and make my own bread crumbs, so that saves a little, and I shop at stores and ministries that sell things dirt cheap.  It works!  And my family has wonderful home-cooked meals to eat every night.  There have been several times when there has been someone in need of a meal in our homeschool group or our church, and I have been able to simply grab one of the meals out of the freezer, add bread and salad, bake some cookies, and we’re ready to go.

I have to say, though, that this time I had a LOT of help from my Mom and Faith.  Mom kept the kitchen cleaned up, while Faith helped by bringing me things and stirring meats and sauces and whatever else needed doing.  We have a full month’s worth of meals in our freezer now, and it’s wonderful.

I generally use the “One Month Plan” outlined in Deborah Taylor-Hough’s book, Frozen Assets.  Over the years I have tried lots of different OAMC plans, but that is by far my family’s favorite.  My kids actually request certain recipes from her books, in particular the Mexi-Chicken!  Actually, that was the first thing Gaylon asked about, too!  Anyway, you can check out her blog at The Simple Mom.

Alex got his provisional driver’s license yesterday.  He has since driven himself all over the place, and we are confident that he will soon master that gear shift, resulting in much smoother take-offs and no more stalling out at stoplights!  He says it feels like he suddenly sprouted wings.  Yeah. . . I remember that feeling.  There is nothing in the life of a teenager quite as liberating as having a car and beginning to feel some sense of freedom. He still can’t drive after 9:00 pm, which I think is an odd choice of curfew, since any movie one might want to go see would most likely end at or after that time, but it only lasts for six months, providing he doesn’t have any violations during that time.  The curfew also prevents him from driving himself to most of his play rehearsals, since they typically end at 9:00 pm.

In other news, Gaylon and I got a really nice treat when we went out to eat at Carrabba’s tonight.  It took them 55 minutes to get our order to us, and so, when they did finally bring it, they informed us it was “on the house”!  All we had to do was tip our waiter!  So for the price of what it would have cost us to eat at McDonald’s, we both got our meals, tiramisu (ummmm. . . .) Gaylon got coffee and I had two glasses of wine!  That is hard to beat!

There seems to be plenty of gasoline, now, which is also really nice.  After that last big hurricane that hit Galveston, we had a major gasoline shortage here in the Southeast.  Asheville even shut down the schools and city offices for a couple of days, because people simply couldn’t get to work.  But, things seem to be okay now.  I think there needs to be some sort of contingency plan, because I seriously doubt that that will be the last hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast states.

I continue to be amazed by the politics in our country.  I heard an ad for Obama on the radio yesterday, telling me that McCain plans to tax health insurance benefits, and that he even states such on his website.  The ad was clear, concise, and very convincing.  Even though I know that Obama is not who he pretends to be, it was almost tempting to believe him.  But, being the research freak that I am, I looked up McCain’s website, just to see if it was true.  It is not.  In fact, they have devoted an entire page on his site refuting the lies in Obama’s ads.  I get so sick of this garbage!  But then, I guess if I had the voting record and the funding sources and supporters that Obama has, I wouldn’t want to talk about myself either, lest someone actually listen and realize the truth.  Much safer to attack the other guy.  Of course, McCain isn’t doing much better.  I am so discouraged by this campaign.  I have already begun to pray that God will send us a wonderful candidate in four years, because there certainly isn’t one this go-round.

And last but not least, if you haven’t checked out all the videos on YouTube and all the other video posting sites with Tina Fey (of Saturday Night Live fame) impersonating Sarah Palin, you’re really missing out on some great humor!  Tina Fey does such an amazing job, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she’s just a comdienne, and not Sarah Palin herself!  Back in 1980, I had the privelege of attending Ronald Reagan’s inaugural gala in Washington.  The best part was the celebrities!  I got to see Frank Sinatra sing New York, New York, and got to watch the inimitable Rich Little.  Bob Hope was there, too.  No, they don’t make ‘em like they used to, but Tina Fey really does do a great job that I think would even impress Rich Little.

Last night, we got to eat Mexican food.  At La Bodega on Big Spring Street in Midland. REAL Mexican food!!!  Tex-Mex.  The stuff that God eats.  After eating “Mexican Food” in North Carolina for 14 years, it is always a super-special treat to eat the real thing.  The salsa that came with the chips actually made my eyes water, it was so hot!  Man, that was good!!!  And it just got better from there.  The queso was actually a lovely golden color, not icky white goat cheese. The food came out smothered in glorious RED sauce, covered with CHEDDAR cheese!!!  It was Nirvana!

So, wanting to share the experience, I called Kendall to let him know how awesomely hot the salsa was.  He was rather rude about it, and told me that if I ever wanted to talk to him again, I should stop talking right then about the salsa. So, I called Gaylon, to share my joy with him.  He said the exact same thing Kendall said (which is really not appropriate to share here) and started whining about how he and Kendall were back home eating Ken-L Rations.  (Yeah, right!)

I am disappointed that they didn’t appreciate my experience, but Mom and Alex certainly did!  Alex loves Tex-Mex, even though he refuses to eat any ‘Mexican’ food in North Carolina.  And really, after last night, it’s going to be really difficult to convince my palate that the stuff they serve out there is worth eating.  *sigh*

View From Our 8th Floor Balcony

Gaylon and I had an amazing weekend in Gatlinburg!  We stayed at the Edgewater Hotel, which was okay.  The elevators were agonizingly s-l-o-w.  But the view from our 8th floor room was awesome! The staff was very nice, friendly and helpful, and the rooms were nice and clean.  Their “bountiful free Continental Breakfast” was, in a word, horrible!  Especially the coffee and the gravy.  After trying it the first morning, we gave it up and went to Shoney’s which was pretty good.  (Still weak and flavorless coffee, though.)

We ate dinner at Linebergers Seafood the first night.  We both had steak and lobster, since we had a $30 gift card from the hotel for that establishment.  The lobster was great, but the steak was a tad on the dry side.  It did have great flavor, though!  And, happily, the coffee was good!  Then we wandered around town until it was time for Gatlinburg’s 33rd Annual 4th of July Midnight Parade.  People had started setting chairs up all along the main street early the morning of the 3rd, and so we didn’t really think we would get a decent spot to see the parade.  But amazingly, we managed to find a perch on top of a barricade and got a great view of the

City of Gatlinburg Float

entire thing!  Right before the parade started, they closed the street to traffic, and we started noticing that coins (real money) were falling into the street, seemingly from nowhere.  All up and down the street, children were running around like crazy chasing these mysterious coins!  After several minutes, we were able to figure out that various shops were throwing their tip jars into the street for the children!  It was absolute pandemonium, and the kids had a blast!!  The parade itself was excellent, with some really amazing floats. My favorite part was the bagpipes!!

We spent the next day (Friday) at Dollywood.  That was nice, and we took in a show, which was a lot of fun.  After leaving Dollywood, we headed back into Gatlinburg for dinner.  We got an amazing deal on some Mexican food at No Way Jose’s Cantina, and finished out dinner in perfect time to walk out into the parking lot and just stand there with several hundred other folks and look up into the sky to witness the most magnificent fireworks display I’ve ever seen!  It was right over the restaraunt, and we could physically feel the mortars going off, we were so close!  The grand finale lasted probably 3 or 4 minutes, and we could hear the most amazing roar echoing off of the mountains!  It was so incredible, I really don’t have the words to describe it!  When it was over, a woman next to us shouted “God Bless the USA!” and a lot of people started shouting “USA! USA! USA!”  It was fantastic!

Grotto Falls

Yesterday we woke up to rain.  But, rather than be discouraged, we thought maybe the Pancake Pantry we had been wanting to eat at might not have such a long line!  So we rushed over there (about a 3 block walk from our hotel) and sure enough: the rain had chased everyone away!  So we got right in and had an awesome breakfast.  Their coffee wasn’t very good, but the pancakes made up for it.  After breakfast, we drove over to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and went hiking.  We hiked up to Grotto Falls, which is about a two and a half mile hike, usually, but we had to park quite a ways from the trail head, so we figure we hiked right at 3 miles.  The falls were really beautiful!  And the weather was awesome, too!  It threatened to rain again all day, but never did, and we had some really nice breezes going up the mountain, which was great!

Last night, we made it to Mass at St. Mary’s, managing to get the absolute last parking spot available at the church!  After Mass, we randomly picked The Park Grill restaurant because it looked really nice, and actually got front-row parking and walked right in!  The steak was melt-in-your-mouth perfect, and their coffee was divine!! (Can you tell that coffee is what really matters to me?)

This morning we knew we’d never have time to wait in line again at the Pancake Pantry, so we thought we’d try out Flapjacks on our way out of town.  Well, the eggs, biscuits and gravy were really good!  But the pancakes, ah, tasted like they had added cake batter to them!  NOT the taste I want in pancakes. . . it was really weird.  And the coffee, well, not so great.  But it was hot and caffeinated, so we were happy!

Our drive home was mostly uneventful.  Just 3/4 of a mile from our exit in Asheville, traffic inexplicably went from 70mph to PARKED.  I had just enough time to lock down the brakes and avoid hitting the truck in front of me, and the poor guy behind me had to swerve into the shoulder toward the retaining wall (is there a law that states that I-40 MUST be under construction at all times, coast-to-coast?) and narrowly avoided plowing right into us!  If we’d been literally 20 feet farther up the road, there was no shoulder, and he would have had to hit me and the wall.  Which brings me to my main point:  God is so good!!  Gaylon and I had an awesome time all weekend long, and the whole time we could see God’s blessings all around us.  It was terrific, and I really hope we get to get away again soon!

There are a ton of Mexican food restaurants in our area. In fact, Alex is ever fearful that someone is going to tear down our house to build a new one! All of these establishments are owned and operated by hardworking Mexicans who have moved here from Central Mexico. Most of them ( the restaurants) are tolerable. One of them, Papas and Beer, is abominable, yet everyone in and around Hendersonville thinks it’s just the best stuff ever.

Let’s get something straight: Mexican food involves CHEDDAR CHEESE. SHREDDED CHEDDAR CHEESE. On everything. It also involves HOT RED SAUCE. Never, under any circumstances should there be any form of white cheese on a plate of Mexican food. Especially melted goat cheese.

Now, please allow me to define “HOT”. HOT = anything that will break a sweat on the forehead of a Mexican man. If it won’t do that, then calling it ‘hot’ is false advertising.

Now, who am I, that I should claim to be such an expert on Mexican Food? I grew up in Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. ‘Nuff said. The stuff they are serving east of the Mississippi does not qualify as Mexican Food. Not even the stuff down in Florida, no matter how many Hispanics claim it’s authentic. If it ain’t TexMex, don’t try to tell me that it’s real. And, before I conclude with this regularly scheduled edition of ‘Valarie’s Soapbox’, let me add that Taco Salad, (or any salad, for that matter) does not qualify as having eaten anything, let alone Mexican Food.

While everyone is down in New Orleans partying at Mardi Gras, and Europeans are indulging in Carnival, Poles all over the United States are celebrating Paczki Day! (Pronounced: punch-key day)

Traditionally, the reason for making paczki has been to use up all the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit in the house, which are forbidden during Lent. They are eaten especially on Fat Thursday, the last Thursday before Lent (Polish: Tlusty czwartek, not to be confused with Fat Tuesday or Shrove Tuesday). In Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Hamtramck, Milwaukee, and South Bend Paczki Day is more commonly celebrated on Fat Tuesday instead of Fat Thursday. Chicago celebrates both Fat Thursday & Fat Tuesday, partially due to its sizeable Polish population.

Paczki

Although they look like Bismarcks or jelly-filled pastries, Paczki are made from especially rich dough containing eggs, fats, sugar and sometimes milk. They feature a variety of fruit and crème fillings and can be glazed, or covered with granulated or powdered sugar. These pastries have become popular in the United States as a result of Polish immigrants and marketing by the bakery industry. They are prepared exclusively in preparation for Lent and are hugely popular in many parts of the country. In Hamtramck, an enclave in Detroit, there is an annual Paczki-Day (Fat Tuesday) Parade, and lines at bakeries can be seen up to 24 hours before the deep-fried delights go on sale Tuesday morning. Many bars in town open early in the morning, and provide free entertainment, a party atmosphere, Paczki-clad mascots, and at at least one bar, Paczki filled with Jagermeister. The Paczki-Day celebration in this town is even larger than many areas have for St. Patrick’s Day. Prunes are considered the traditional filling, but many others are used as well, including lemon, strawberry, Bavarian cream, blueberry, custard, raspberry, and rarely apple. Due to French influence, paczki are eaten on Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) rather than on Fat Thursday. In the large Polish community of Chicago, and other large cities across the Midwest, paczki day is also celebrated annually by immigrants and locals alike.

Another cultural phenomenon is the emergence of the “Paczki Challenge.” A eating contest in which individuals attempt to race from one side of a room (non – standard) while eating as much or as many Paczki as they can before reaching the other side. The person to reach first and having eaten the most Paczkis wins. Typically a ratio of 1 Paczki for every 10 steps is considered competitive.

Okay, it’s not as, um, exotic as Mardi Gras or Carnival, but it’s my Polish heritage!

(Above information about Paczki Day from: Wikipedia)

. . . you should see the photo!! Let me explain. I checked my email tonight, and found a Flickr message from somebody named Jarrett, telling me that he represents a new website called NowPublic.com, and that they have found one of my photographs on Flickr that they think would be good for an article they’re doing on their new site.

Well, needless to say, I was curious, so I checked it out. They didn’t say which picture they were interested in, so I had to at least find out. Now let me admit up front that I am not the world’s greatest photographer, although, from time to time I manage to take an amazing picture of one of my cats! So, imagine my shock when I found that the picture they had found was of the Seven-Layer Dip I made for our Halloween Party!!! Of all of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken in my lifetime, never in my wildest imaginings did I think that a picture of bean dip would capture someone’s attention!

However, it’s a real site, and a pretty good article! Check it out: “Double Dipping is ‘Like Kissing Everybody at the Party’. When you’re done reading the article, be sure to click on the slide show to see my photo! However, for those of you who are never going to click that link, here is a copy of the picture:

I am proud to say that I made the whole thing myself, right down to the pumpkin-shaped tortilla chips. And I even managed to get a picture of it before everyone descended upon it like locusts!

Today, we will come home from Mass and begin preparing for our Christmas Eve Celebration, Wigilia (vi-GEE-lee-ah’). This is the traditional Polish Christmas Eve Vigil Dinner, beginning with the first star of the evening, Gwiazdka (g-VIAHZ-kah), followed by the lighting of the Christmas Tree, Choinka (hoy-EEN-kah), the sharing of the Christmas Wafer, Oplatek (oh-PWAH-tek), the not-totally-Polish-feast, the singing of Carols, Koledy, and finally, Midnight Mass, Pasterka (poss-STAIR-kah)!

My immediate family has not always celebrated Christmas like this.  We’ve always celebrated Christmas, but in varioius ways throughout the years. I discovered Wigilia in the process of researching our family history, and we all agreed that it was a wonderful way to celebrate the birth of Christ, and at the same time add some seriously lacking culture to our melting-pot family.

So, for me, Wigilia is a way of connecting.  A way of connecting, not only to my religion and my God, but to my family and my heritage.  Growing up, my family was (and actually still is) very scattered.  We didn’t go to visit family members often, and they only rarely came to see us. Weddings and funerals were the exceptions, and even then, most of the family couldn’t make it! I have very few memories of playing with my cousins.  In fact, I only have three first-cousins.  (As opposed to my husband, who has like, a million cousins, or some outrageous number like that!) And one of the few holiday-cousin memories I do have is of Spencer breaking the index finger of my left hand while we were trying to play German Dodgball! (Hey, is that cultural??)

My brother and my sister are both quite a bit older than I am, so I don’t have any real memories of growing up with them, either.  I do remember my brother used to walk around the house on his hands, and that was absolutely fascinating to me when I was three years old!  And I remember my sister babysitting me once.  She talked on the phone the whole time and kept putting the earpiece up to the stereo speaker so her friend could hear the song “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”.  Funny, the things you remember!

I do remember going to Midnight Mass, and that was always a highlight.  It is such a beautiful service.  Even if someone is not Catholic, I am sure they would appreciate and enjoy the holiness and beauty of Midnight Mass!

So, I guess genealogy was, in many ways for me, a means to having a ‘past’, a family. It was a way to connect with the family I never knew, a way to ‘belong’, to somebody, somewhere.  I always knew that my grandmother was Polish.  I knew her mother had come from Poland to Chicago when she was only 17, and that the boat had caught on fire!

I met my great-grandmother at least four times that I can remember, and she was always a great source of fascination for me. She had piercing, coal-black eyes and a very thick Polish accent.  In fact, my father always needed a translator to converse with her, and she needed someone to tell her what he was saying because his Southern Drawl was too difficult for her to understand!  Dutifully, since it was her grandmother, after all, my mother would interpret for the two of them.  I understood my father’s dilemma, because she always referred to me as “Walleree”.  Daddy thought that was absolutely hysterical, but his sense of humor always was a bit ‘off’!

Food and cooking are the most vivid memories I have of my Polish Grandmother, who firmly believed that if it was breathing, she should feed it, and that no one at her table could ever get enough to eat. Such is the true legacy I received from Poland. So, in an attempt to celebrate the birth of our Savior in a more meaningful way, in an attempt to provide a cultural heritage for my children, I will cook!  I will cook for two days (and really should have started cooking yesterday!) and I will fill our home with the wonderful smells of Christmas Love!

Every year I buy new magazines and mine the internet for new Thanksgiving recipes and ideas. Many years my family has patiently endured new menu items while secretly wishing I would simply serve the dishes they have come to love and anticipate on Thanksgiving.  I finally have come to terms with the fact that my children expect certain culinary treats every year, and they couldn’t care less if I find a new and exciting way to make stuffing.  In fact, they love the cornbread stuffing their dad makes, and that’s what they want.  And they don’t want garlic or sour cream mashed potatoes.  They just want mashed potatoes.  And so on.  So, this year, I will be cooking basically the same foods my grandmother cooked for us when I was a kid.  And the beauty of this is that I can do most of it ahead of time, and spend Thanksgiving Day enjoying time with my family and friends.

So, our menu is as follows:

• Turkey
• Giblet Gravy
• Cornbread Stuffing
• Green Bean Casserole
• Red-skinned Mashed Potatoes
• Corn Casserole
• Candied Yams
• Cranberry Sauce (straight out of the can!)
• Homemade Wheat Rolls
• Fruit Salad
• Pumpkin Cheesecake
• Pumpkin Bread
• Deviled Eggs
• Pecan Pie
• Pumpkin Pie

I have included the recipes for the Corn Casserole and Candied Yams on my “Thanksgiving Recipes” page, if anyone is interested. My kids mutiny if I don’t serve the Corn Casserole.

To my family, those foods mean Thanksgiving.  And, this year, as with every year gone past, we have so much to be Thankful for.  I have a beautiful family, a wonderful home, we are all healthy, Gaylon has a great job, and most of all, God is Good!!!  As an added bonus, Gaylon and I will be celebrating 21 years of marriage on Thanksgiving Day.  Wow.

Several years ago, I became aware of the fact that we never got invited to any Christmas parties. I had all these wonderful ideas about how fun that would be, but we never got the opportunity. For a while, I felt really rejected. Then I realized that I didn’t know anybody who went to Christmas parties. So, I determined that we would have our own Christmas party. Apparently, it was a great idea, because everybody was delighted to accept our invitation!

So, after several years of Christmas parties, the kids started saying that it would be really fun if we had a Halloween party, too. So they could dress up and invite all their friends over to dress up with them. And I thought it was a great idea, because since we homeschool, my kids can’t go to the Halloween party at their school unless I create it myself! And, it seems that those old time Halloween parties/carnivals are getting fewer and farther between.

Here in the South, so many folks really take issue with Halloween. They see it as evil, and promoting witchcraft. I respect that position, even though I do not subscribe to it. I take a more romantic, Charlie Brown/Great Pumpkin view of this holiday. I think it’s a lot of fun to dress up and have a party, and Halloween seems like a great excuse! Or maybe it’s the Irish in me, because it was the Irish, after all, who brought the celebration to the states. At any rate, I don’t believe it’s evil. I understand that some people do evil things in honor of Halloween. But some people do evil things for no reason at all, on any given day of the year. I’m not going to stop celebrating my wedding anniversary just because it also happens to be the calendar date that JFK was shot!! (It’s also the date of C.S. Lewis’s death, but for some reason nobody ever mentions that. Go figure. I liked C.S. Lewis a lot more than JFK, but I digress. . .)

So now in addition to our annual Christmas Party, we also have a big Halloween party every year. I spend days and weeks planning, and Faith loves to help. The boys even pitch in when they can. I make really cool treats, and we decorate the house. This year I made a Frankie’s Bride cake, “Bloody Eyeballs”, Caramel Popcorn mix with little pumpkin candies in it, deviled eggs (I dye the whites orange and the filling green), orange punch, tortilla chips shaped like pumpkins to go with the seven layer dip. Faith made a special “Halloween Mix”. My friends all brought food, as well. One friend always comes early to help me decorate, and she made the cutest cupcakes, decorated like little witches with ice cream cone hats. Last year I also made “Finger” cookies, Queso Dip and a Graveyard Cake. We carve pumpkins and set them out on our front porch. We break out the fog machine. Sometimes we play guitars and sing. And we have an absolute blast.

This year we even had games for the younger children. Faith and I made a very cute “Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Black-Cat” game. The kids also played “Boo Am I?”, a variation on charades, “Pass the Pumpkin”, which is similar to “Button, button, who’s got the button?”, and “Mummy Wrap”. For the second year in a row we forgot to do the costume contest, but nobody seemed to notice! We also bobbed for apples! Yeah, I know, that’s terribly politically incorrect, but for some reason, everyone loved it.

I have uploaded a new photo album, if anybody wants to see pictures. One of Kendall’s friends, Marianna, also took a lot of pictures and let me have copies, so we have tons of pictures to share. Please check it out! If you like the pictures, leave me a comment! I’d love to know you were ‘here’, LOL!