planning thanksgiving

So, for two adults, a 5 year old, and a 2 year old, I have a menu of:

-an "all-natural" 10 pound turkey (which is smaller than it sounds), which we may wrap in bacon (veejane is dying to do something odd with meat)
-mashed baby yukon gold potatoes (locally grown)
-Pepperidge Farm stuffing (because I love it)
-beets (Earth Fare)
-haricots verts (Earth Fare)
-salad (local, if it lasts that long)
-canned jellied Ocean Spray cranberry sauce (because I love it)

dessert:
apple pie (I found Romes at the Kroger)
pumpkin cheesecake (pumpkin from an actual pumpkin, locally grown)

So, Wednesday I need to make the pie crusts and the cheesecake, I think. Most everything else is actually pretty easy.

I just need to make it through today; so far the children are in pajamas (actually Dillo just took his off) and refusing to eat their lunches and I have promised they can watch Barbie Rapunzel AGAIN (which will be my opportunity to put a third coat of varnish on the table top). If emergency measures are called for, I'll get out the pup tent and set it up in the dining room.

Casper, on tents

We have set up the pup tent in the dining room, after some leaf-raking (for which Casper was enthusiastically helpful, during the first 10 minutes, anyway, and Dillo shuddered at leaf-blowers a block away and clutched cheddar bunnies to his chest.)

Casper just explained to Dillo: "People like to stay in tents. Some people even live in tents! My old grandfather used to live in a tent, and then he came to America."

Note: both of Casper's grandfathers were born into middle-class American splendor, in Cleveland and Boston, respectively. All of her great-grandparents were born in the US also. None of them, to my knowledge, ever lived in a tent.

yoicks!

mr. flea called - he met up with his coworker in the airport in Paris, but the other guy was unable to go on, due to an attack of vertigo - mr. flea left him at the airport with some EMTs. (The other guy told mr. flea to go on.) So he did the Paris-Antwerp leg by himself, and even took a public tram to the hotel rather than take a taxi. Very brave. He has never travelled outside the US without me, and is not confident in his navigation abilities when he doesn't speak the language(s). He said it snowed the whole way on the train, and he went out to dinner with some of the other guy's former students, Netherlanders.

Silly man didn't take his fancy camera; he was afraid he would lose it. So no pictures of snowy Antwerp for us.