a hunting we will go . . . . .

Not for animals of course. :)

So i hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey Day? We had a good one. It was amusing though. First, mom and I had been talking earlier in the week. She was having a problem because her oven was going to be in conflict. So i told her that when i lived in WI, my friend k's family used an electric Nesco Roaster to do the turkey. Mom had enver really heard of that and was SOOO excited! She went RIGHT out and bought one. So when i got there around 1230 we started setting the whole thing up to roast her 16lb turkey. So i slathered the turkey with a lot of herbed butter, on the skin and under it. Then put it in the roaster breast side down (lets gravity do it's job and pull the juices into the breast.) Then we added a quart of chicken stock to the bottom to help the basting and let it go. well - the booklet said 4 hours which makes sense for a 16 lb bird. well at 2.5 hours we opened it up to flip it over so the skin can start to crisp etc. And well... the bird fell apart. It was pretty much done. 1.5 hours early. the leg and thigh just pulled off with the entire hip joint with it. So we are theorizing that it STEAMED it which cooked it much faster than roasting. hehehe. So we put it in the oven for a bit to just crisp the skin. So the breast wasn't QUITE as moist as usual but it still came out lovely.

The next day - Mom, S, M and I all went to the camera store. We figured since it wasn't in the mall, and was in a shopping center with not a lot of "gifty" type stores we'd risk it. When we got there, there was a LOT of open parking which was cool. And the store was not too busy which was cool. We went because I wanted a new camera. See i *LOVE* My main camera. It's a Canon Digital Rebel. But it's a DSLR camera. lots of interchangeable lenses etc. The problem with that is that it's really rather awkward to bring to things like parties, and events and stuff when you just want a quick snapshot ya know? So i got this.

The canon Powershot SD800IS. It's so TINY!!! i love it!! so i had to use it this weekend. One thing I did was take pictures of our foliage hunting trip.

This is a picture of the farm.















Pine Valley Christmas Tree Farm - in Maryland

We decided to start our new traditions as a family. (we did not bring the doggies though)

So we got our very first ChristmaChanuKwanzika Foliage to bring home and decorate. We took the wagon up to the field and I managed to hobble around for a while so we could pick out our tree. We found a lovely douglas fir and had the nice man with the chainsaw cut it down for us. Then home we went to set it up. The Green tree looks really pretty with the red walls don't it?


We put the lights on yesterday - I haven't quite worked out the pictures of that with the new camera. We got LED lights and they are REALLLLLY bright so we get this blue HAZE all over the tree when we try to take the pictures. I"ll have to see what i can do.

I a couple of weeks we are going to have our "decorate our first foliage" party. Since we have no ornaments or anything else, we figure we'll feed everyone and they can donate ornaments to our collection and start our traditions.










Meanwhile - surgery is this thursday - here's hoping i'll be walking well again. i'm sure I will post within a day or two after to let you all know how it went. Mom is looking forward to driving my new car to take me to the surgicenter - since she has a sports car that makes it a little more difficult. And we're trying to figure out how we can go shopping while i'm on crutches. I'll update you with more as I know.