Too Busy to Even Pee

I've finally found a spare moment to write. Boys are all three in bed (those two golden hours of my day), poured myself a tall, icy beverage (bet you can't guess what it is!), and ready to roll. Why do I have all these clever ideas of what to post when I don't have the time, and when I do find the time, my mind is fairly empty? Life gets so busy, even with all the good things. But that's the way I like it to be.
CPS came for Baby Friday afternoon. It was kind of hard on me for them to take her, but I knew her time with us would be short. I'd hoped it wouldn't be, who am I kidding? She was a beautiful, healthy, obviously well-loved and taken-care-of child, and Mom was just young and needed some help. Happy to oblige.
Thanksgiving was such a great day. Best T'day in recent memory, I would think. Brad, Heidi, Ben, and Lily went to the Turkey Trot (alas, still no running for the wicked. Soon, I hope. Soon). I had delegated most of dinner to Brad's two chef sisters, so I started roasting the turkey at 6:30, the time at which I had calculated that it needed to go in. I have been wanting a large roasting oven for a few years, and when I saw them on sale at Sam's, I couldn't resist. There is a disclaimer included in the instructions for said oven, stating that "food will cook faster than in a standard oven." HAH! I thought I had all the t's crossed and i's dotted, but believe it or not, that bird cooked in 3 hours, instead of the 6 I thought it would take. It was my own stinkin' fault. For the first time in ... oh, ever ... I had properly thawed the thing. What to do, what to do? Now, don't misunderstand. Calculating when food will be done is not one of my marketable skills, so this isn't an unprecedented situation. However, in the past it's always been everyone around the table drooling, and me in the kitchen praying that the salmonella has all been removed, even if the thermometer doesn't read 170. Lucky for me, Real Simple saved the day. Did you know (which you probably all did!), that you can cut the turkey, cover it in broth,then let it sit until you're ready to eat? It was a true holiday miracle! IT WORKED! The best thing about it was that Brad had the turkey carved, picked apart and gutted hours before dinner. The most dreaded of Thanksgiving tasks was out of the way! And the meat was absolutely delightful. If you have guests that don't care about seeing the beautiful holiday bird on a plate of festive greens and cranberries, then I would fully recommend this approach!
Brad also helped the kids make a gratitude turkey, borrowing an idea from my good friend Cindy.
I'm quite bugged, because I've tried literally 6 times, and I can't get the image recognized. Dangit! Anyway, we taped a huge paper turkey body on the kitchen window, and the kids cut out tail feathers and wrote what they were thankful for on the feathers. It was pretty fun.
One of the best parts of the day was the dramatic thunderstorm that night. See these cute girl cousins? All of them were wrapped in blankets out on the patio, just enjoying the rain. Must be AZ girls!
Julia, Manon, Heidi and Lily. Aren't they beautiful?

I felt like I had just gone to bed after all the festivities, when Baby woke me up to feed her. I tell you, this was a perfect baby. I went to bed with the hopes that she'd wake me up around 2:30 so I could feed her, and what do you know, 2:32 am and she wakes up to eat. Such a doll. She looked a lot like the baby in Ice Age, not quite as much hair, and not quite as CG.
Why 2:30, you ask? Well, isn't Friday after Thanksgiving BLACK FRIDAY? I've done Black Friday shopping with my best friend Karen for many years now (not that I'm really old enough to be able to say "for many years now" about anything!), and I've missed the last two years either down in bed being pregnant or defecting and taking a trip to Disneyland (a betrayal that I will never again commit). So I was really looking forward to it this time. Look at the picture on Karen's blog of me posing as the 4th Charlie's Angel with a denim jumpsuit. It was funny, and we were a little punchy by that time anyway (around 8 am). It was a very successful shopping day, aside from the phone call from CPS at 1 pm to come pick up Baby. But I completely finished all my shopping that day. WHEW! It's a good thing, too, because I don't know when I'll ever be out shopping alone again!