acronyms

last wednesday, i did a thanksgiving project/craft with the kids. i had them make turkeys out of construction paper. on each feather, the kids wrote things they were thankful for. as i was reading through them, i saw this one: "I am thankful for my BFFE..." i asked her what BFFE stood for because i couldn't think of anything for the E. she was like, "you know, best friend for ever." it made me laugh. i explained that forever was one word, so just an F, no FE.

the aftermath

we had enough food to feed 20+ people. susan's coworker and her friends brought extra dishes - 20 twice-baked potatoes halves, creamed corn pudding, more green beans, deliciously expensive mac and cheese with balsamic reduction, and pumpkin pie. we stuck all the food on the table and ate on the floor of the living room with our paper plates and plastic picnicware. we run a no frills operation. :) i spent time "de-nuding" the turkey, as may puts it. all the yummy dark meat was carved off and saved in plastic containers. i resorted to plastic gloves to hear off the rest. i'm pretty sure i threw away some good meat still stuck on the bones. oh well, it wasn't worth the effort.



after dinner, we sat around and entertained ourselves with the wii. watching tall white guys boxing, bowling, and playing tennis was way amusing, though mario galaxy is disorienting after having eaten platefuls of thanksgiving foods.

later, we moved onto board games - apples to apples (awesome word association) and taboo (go a-team...er, team a).

now we have a refrigerator full of leftovers and we will slowly make our way through. let the weight gain commence.

more photos here

food prep

somehow, what we thought was going to be a small dinner is now a full-scale dinner party. susan and i went grocery shopping yesterday and it was crazy out, with traffic and other late shoppers. tonight, we spent hours cooking and baking things so that we have less to do tomorrow.

our menu:
molasses butter turkey
roasted sweet potatoes
corn bread souffle
stuffing
green beans with toasted almonds and lemon
green salad with feta cheese
cranberry sauce with marmalade
spinach cheese puffs (courtesy of grace and joe)
other potato dish (courtesy of susan's friend)

pumpkin cookies
homemade carrot cake
flan

cooking

one of my resolutions for my 2nd year of teaching was to leave school earlier. eh...i've just recently begun to leave before it gets dark. so hopefully, i'll be able to figure out how to leave before 4pm everyday.



another resolution has been to start cooking more. we have a staff potluck tomorrow in honor of thanksgiving so i decided to try and make risotto. i found a recipe for shrimp risotto with baby spinach and basil. it turned out pretty good! i was initially worried.

guppies

one of my students gave me guppies, three of them to be exact. as a class, we settled on some names by popular vote: mini, yoshi, and fish vader. names are also given in size order from smallest to biggest. i had to bring them home this weekend for fear of the guppies starving to death over the long weekend. i just looked up information on guppy care and it looks a lot more involved that i imagined.