Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving Dinner was a hit this year and, as always, went off without a hitch! I know everyone has some exciting story about Thanksgiving, and I guess I do have one but it always slips my mind-- I'll throw that in after the pictures.

In addition to us, mom, David, and Casey, mom's friend Sharon and her son Alex came, as well as Michael and the kids and Emmy-- a fantastic crowd! We spent the day cleaning, cooking, and watching what ended up being a mini-Rourke marathon with Iron Man 2 and The Expendables. I cooked a sweet potato casserole (which everyone said was the best they'd ever had!), and did the turkey and stuffing/dressing, plus the cranberry sauce-- all of these were first time experiences for me and they all came out amazing!

Pictures, of course, for your viewing pleasure:

Belle perked up when she saw mom with ham

So we treated her-- it's Thanksgiving after all!

The tongs from the ham fell on the floor-- guilty much?

mom's pretty mantle. Even if the teensy lightshade is tippled...

Jeremy and Sharon work the logistics of getting the bird to the carving plate

VICTORY!

I carve the turkey!

Everyone waiting for dinner

Violet used my old records as weapons of mass distraction

"I can have some, yeeeeeesssss?"

FOOD! (without the sweet potato casserole, that was warming in the oven)

Pretty table

Violet instructs Uncle Jeremy on the finer points of what will eventually go in her belly

Michael's been beaten and Violet realizes that there's food on Aunt Meg's plate to steal now!

We shall see this mischievous look more than once in her life!

It was a great meal and great company, I'm so glad we all got to come together!

My fun Thanksgiving story, for posterity:

It was my first year at the airline and I was living in Memphis. I had to work the day after Thanksgiving, so I'd flown in to Atlanta a couple of days before and flew back on Thanksgiving day (fantastic day to travel, btw, business class was just me and another FA!). As the plane was taking off in Atlanta, I realized that I had not bought a turkey or even turkey breasts! When I landed, I called Amy to see if she knew of anywhere that would still be open and the only place we could think of was the Middle Eastern market so I went and got chicken breasts. We were having Jeremy and Ashley over for dinner, and I think Zac as well, and we'd been cooking up a storm when Ashley called to say she was there-- I went out to meet her and then Jeremy got there and I completely forgot about the chicken in the oven! It was sooo dried out it was nearly inedible, and we dug through the fridge and covered them with BBQ Sauce and Ashley opted for ketchup. It was still a great Thanksgiving, though!

Catching Up

Well, the last week has been pretty interesting and full of stories to tell! It didn't start until Thursday, obviously, but that night we had Strike Out which was a huge hit! The girls did a really great job organizing it (they did a bowling tourney) and it went off without a hitch. Lizzy and I went and hung out for a while, kept an eye on things, but bailed early since they obviously had everything under control and we had things to do in the morning.

Friday, I went out to Stone Mountain to meet with India, Becky, and Danielle to check out the potential venue for formal! I'm really excited, I can't say anything because we haven't announced it to the chapter (and I think some of the girls check my blog from Facebook, at the very least have the opportunity to!) but WOW it's going to be great!! I'll put up the picture of me, India, and Danielle with all the details as soon as it gets announced because I am super pumped. I do get the joy of checking names at the door, and imparting the severity of misbehaviour on our night of frivolity, but it should still be a blast.

We went out for lunch afterwards at Applebees (first time ever at an Applebees) where I had some not-half-bad hot wings. After that, I went to the PO and got all the rest of my baby presents shipped off and picked up postage for save the dates, which got dropped at the PO tonight. I also went by Target and found my wedding invitations! They're really cute, flat white invitations with a black ribbon that go in to little silver pockets. I'm very excited-- they're about $15/pack more than I originally wanted, but they're definitely the style I want. I'm really excited!

Saturday was the super exciting day-- it started with a Foundation breakfast at 9a (ungodly time for a Saturday breakfast, IMO) to which I drove in the pouring, nay torrential, rain that we got all day long. The breakfast was nice, and I met some really great women, and the food was tres magnifique!

After the breakfast, I went for brunch with some of my old high school friends who are still around. Emily (who went to Rhodes with me, we actually didn't get along at ALL in High School), Catherine, and Meg (who just had the baby) met me at Carpe Diem and we hung out for hours. Catherine and I got there first, and thought bottomless mimosas would be an awesome idea...

To the right, there is the regular mimosa Emily got... in the foreground, the first of mine and Catherine's drinks. We had four. And over at Carpe Diem, they make true to their name-- we probably drank at least a bottle of champagne each!! It didn't quite hit us until the third round that there was way more champagne in our drinks than OJ or peach (since I switched to bellinis) and we had about two to three times the drink Emily did! The food, of course, was freaking awesome. Carpe Diem's a little on the pricey side, but it's always worth it. I only had a biscut and some grits since I'd eaten at the breakfast, but I munched off of Catherine's french toast and Emily's head-sized omlette (Meg didn't have leftovers... that whole breastfeeding mom thing!) so I still had plenty to eat. We all felt like old ladies by the end of it because all we talked about was babies, birth control (Catherine's going to start trying to get pregnant in June!!), weddings, and toddler poop. We passed baby Vi around before she fell asleep, which she did quickly and quietly-- I know she's only a month old, but she's so easy, we were all impressed. Meg says she barely cries, just kind of chills out and eats like a good little girl! The waitress to a picture of us all for posterity, it's probably one of my favorite recent photographs!

After that, we went to Catherine's and met her puppy, Bruno, a miniature pinscher who is absolutely adorable. I mean, terrifying... yeah, terrifying, right Caq? She and Emily went to see her family and her old, sick cat, and I went home to take a nap.. thanks bottomless mimosas... I ended up sleeping for four hours and missing the staff meeting, but it wasn't that big of a deal. The only painful part was the champagne catching up to me... I don't drink it often enough to really remember that I don't get along with champagne... at all. Not even the really good stuff! Prosecco for me, thank you very much!

Sunday, I went down to Columbus, GA for a Foundation talk at the new chapter down there-- it was really exciting to meet a chapter who hadn't even taken their membership exam yet, I've never been to one that young! They also just had their first Strike Out and raised over $1100 for Arthritis Research!!! Gooooo CSU AOII! On my way back, I picked up an adaptor for my laptop plug so I could listen to music while I drive (since it's only $30 and a new radio/cd player is like $150+) and jammed all the way back up 85N!

Thursday morning, I'm leaving for Memphis to go to Heather's birthday dinner, and the hockey game, and see some of my friends up there. I'm really excited, as much as I dislike Memphis, I really do miss my friends a lot. Next Thursday, I head down to Florida to see Jeremy!! Yaaay! I'll have two good bottles of wine and I'm going to pick up some fish when I'm down there and make a delicious dinner for him.

Now, however, it's time for bed. I'm up about three hours later than I meant to be... I gotta stop snacking before I go to bed-- I spend too much time eating chips and salsa!

Ciao for now, dears!

Family Tree

So I'm up late (which is bad since I've been pretty good this week) because I've gotten sucked in to my mother's side of the family tree. My father's side is pretty cool, too, but I think that when you have some badass Southern women in your family, you really can't go wrong. There are also some really awesome names, for example:

My father's grandmother (Rebecca, for whom I am named)- Arvazena (middle name)
My father's aunt- Gazell
My mother's grandmother (Flora, for whom I would like to name my daughter)- Anzilly
My mother's grandfather (Flora's husband)- Tullious
My granny- Marjorie Mavorette (named for a French actress who died, Mimaw saw it in the paper and thought it was pretty)
Flora's sisters- Hettie, Minnie Leota
Flora's stepmother- Stella
Mom's dad- Leo (middle name)
Granny's sister- Maureen. I was to be named for Maureen, but my granny and mimaw and all the others were convinced it would bring bad luck-- Maureen died when she was two of influenza (1927-1929)
Mom's aunts- Della, Zelma Dean
Mom's other assorted aunts- Gussie Vera, Myra Nell, Eva Pearl, Hautie Ardilla
Mom's other assorted uncles- Theopholis Wahtheu, Byron

I know my extended family tree isn't all that interesting to everyone, but I just thought those were some really awesome names. Now I'm never going to figure out what to name my daughter-- guess I'll have to have two :P

The database I used is pretty cool, the Edenfield Database, and very well researched. I have a few blanks to fill in for them, and I'm actually going to help because they're really involved!

I was telling Krystal earlier that my favorite story is actually about Rebecca, my father's grandmother. She was Native American, her grandfather (I believe) being the chief of the Creek Nation Tribe in Colbert County (named for him, Chief Colbert) and when her husband died and she was left with a whole mess of children (six or seven? my aunt Gazell being the youngest), the state of Alabama declared that she couldn't own land because she was Native American. She camped out near her property and when the corn was ripe, she took the children and they harvested all the corn and walked to Memphis. That's right, walked. That's somewhere between 150-200 miles.

Speaking of Memphis, my Aunt Gazell was named when her father went to the Memphis Zoo and saw a Gazelle-- he asked a keeper the name of (in his opinion) the prettiest animal there and was told "That there's a gay-zell" so he went home and spelled it best he could and her name is pronounced "gay-zell".

OK, I'm going to stop boring you with my family stories and try to hit the hay-- lots of stuff to get out of storage tomorrow and then Jeremy on Saturday! Huzzah!!