Best weekend

Oh man. Best weekend I've had in a long time. Dad was here to spend Thanksgiving with us and we had a great time with him. We had fun shopping, watching movies, eating (oh man...I need to eat salad for the next week to counteract all the amazing food we had the past 3 days), talking, walking Penny, driving through KC to look at the lights, and just hanging out. It was really relaxing and makes me even more excited for Christmas, when we're back in NC for a week. I haven't been back since May and am really itching to go back.

So Thursday was pretty low key for us. Michael smoked our turkey on the grill, using an apple juice/cranberry juice marinade. It turned out amazing. Really moist and tender, and full of flavor. Smoking the bird is the way to go! Our Turkey day spread also included cornbread and sausage stuffing, fresh green beans with craisins and bacon, homemade jellied cranberry sauce, homemade rolls, sweet potato with marshmallow topping, mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, and pumpkin and pecan pies for dessert.



The main event about 3 hours into cooking.



How cute are these? They were made from football molds and Alton Brown's recipe.


The tablescape. Wow, did I really say that? How very Sandra Lee of me.


No, my darling dog, you cannot have my plate.

After eating and giving our stomachs a little while to rebound, we headed out to Olathe to see the newest Harry Potter movie. I really enjoyed it. Dark, absolutely...but so is the book. I wouldn't mind seeing it again at some point before it goes out of theaters.

Friday we did a small amount of black friday shopping. We weren't among the brave (or crazy, depending on your viewpoint) going out at 3/4am. We waited until 9ish and still found some amazing deals. At Target I used some of my birthday money from my grandparents to get some Christmas decorative stuff, like pillows, a blanket, candles, bathroom towels, and...a light up flamingo with a Santa hat. Yeah. It's actually pretty cute! Michael and Dad waited in the car for me at Bath & Body Works...that place was more crazy than Target. But I made it out with a couple of candles and some foaming hand wash for pretty cheap.

After putting up all the Christmas decorations and a lunch of Thanksgiving leftovers, we drove out to Nebraska Furniture Mart. After some intense discussion and debating over fabric, style, whether or not a sectional would fit, etc., we chose a really comfortable blue/gray sectional for our living room. It has two sections that recline and I'm soo excited for it to arrive. It's being delivered on Thursday so we'll be sure to take pictures.

Shopping for couches is pretty tiring, in spite of the fact that you're sitting to test them out. We were pretty hungry by the time we left, so we headed over to Stroud's to try their famous pan fried chicken. This place has truly earned its amazing reputation and accolades. Theirs is the only cinnamon roll without frosting I will actually eat. It was SO good! The chicken and mashed potatoes were outstanding as well. We will definitely be adding this to our 'places to take visitors' rotation.

Today we hung around Lawrence until it was time to take my dad back to the airport. We took him to a Lawrence institution, Wheatfield's Bakery, and walked around Mass St and enjoyed the mild weather. Overall, it was so great to hang out with my dad, enjoy some good food, and have a little time off from work and the regular day to day life. So thankful for the opportunity to do that every once in a while!

Birthday :)

I decided earlier this year that I would not mope on my birthdays, especially not this year. Yes, it's my first one without my mom, and I miss her. But I don't think she'd want me to dwell on those sad feelings. She'd want me to have a good time and be joyful with my friends and family. So I did. Today, on my 26th birthday, Michael and I gave out cinnamon rolls to a few friends. We have 2 different recipes: his and my mom's. The ones he passed out today were his recipe, which is a copycat version of Cinnabon (aka enormous with a cream cheese frosting). We will make my mom's recipe over Christmas and give them out to friends, because my family always did that on Christmas Eve, after she'd spent all day making them from scratch. So I guess you could say having cinnamon rolls be a part of my birthday today reminds me of my mom, which keeps a piece of her and those happy memories close.

So to start off, I received these yesterday, which put me in a great mood, from my father in law and stepmom in law. The flowers will do double duty as a centerpiece for Thanksgiving. It was really sweet of them to send me flowers. I think every girl just loves to get flowers, even if it's a rare treat...just makes it that much more special.



Went to a nail salon with my friend Elizabeth and we got pedicures. It was a relaxing treat, and I'm glad I convinced her to go with me. I think we are going to see Burlesque on Sunday. Any Lawrencians reading this and want to come with, let me know...

Then I went to Target and bought Beauty and the Beast on Blu Ray...because the inner little girl in me will never go away. ;)

Came home and made my grandma's recipe for pecan pie (which is pretty much the same as the karo syrup bottle's recipe but don't tell her that. Haha.) It smells SO good in the house! Michael made homemade crescent rolls and cornbread. We realized halfway through that we only have one pie plate, so we improvised and put pie dough into muffin tins and will make pumpkin pie muffins tomorrow.

After baking we went to KCI to pick up my dad from the airport!! He is in town through Saturday afternoon. SO happy he is here. I haven't seen him since July and just love him to pieces. It will be another 6ish years before we have the opportunity to live in the same town again, and that is hard, but these visits are just the best.

We decided on steak for my birthday dinner, and after some fiddling around with yelp/urbanspoon, decided on Hereford House in Leawood. Oh. Em. Gee. It was amazing. One of the best steaks I think I've ever had. Pictures do not do it justice but I will post them anyway:

The shrimp came on a block of ice. Cool-literally. Har har.


Your standard steakhouse caesar salad and roll, but yummy nonetheless.


Steak Oscar...filet mignon with a crab cake, in a béarnaise sauce with asparagus and mashed potatoes. The steak cut like butter. I have leftovers...too bad tomorrow is Thanksgiving!


White chocolate bread pudding. So incredibly rich and decadent. I could only eat a few bites but it was delicious.

And the piece de resistance, better than any steak:


It's a Marc by Marc Jacobs Hillier Hobo bag. It's so soft...I can't get over how cute it is. My dad definitely spoils me, no doubt about it.

He also gave me a present from my best friend's mom, also known as "Mommy #2" throughout middle and high school (and now, haha). We collected all of the ribbons from the flower arrangements at my mom's funeral in March. She knew a local artist that makes ribbon wreath art and had 3 made for my dad, sister and I.



How awesome is this? I now have a physical keepsake of that day, of all of the friends and family that cared enough to be there, to send flowers to decorate mom's final send off from this life. I was too overwhelmed on April 3rd, her funeral, to really take in the amount of people that were there to celebrate her life. All I wanted to do was hide in a corner and bawl my eyes out until everyone left. But now I can remember, through this piece of art, just what a celebration it really was.

Anyway...26 is off to a great start. And I need to get to bed, because I've got a great day planned with my dad tomorrow...cooking, eating, parade watching, dog show cheering, napping, and Harry Potter! Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween

This weekend was just what I needed: quality time with my husband. I feel like since we're so busy during the week, him with school and me with work and group activities, it's important that we make time for each other whenever we can. Friday he showed his love for me in a major, major way. I was baptized by my pastor at EastLake's worship night. Worship night is basically a party for our church...lots of songs from the band, communion, and baptisms. He'd had a crappy day at school and had a rain cloud over him the entire day, but he still came because he knew it meant a lot to me for a family member to be there at my baptism. He still has some comfort issues with church in general, which is fine. I will never force him to come with me because that will be the quickest way to get him to completely shut down. I know that he sees East Lake as a pretty safe place, so I will just hope and pray that with time he will have some of those issues resolved.

The baptism itself was a full immersion. They had a big tub for us and in total, 21 people were baptized that night. It was really something special. I felt giddy as soon as I came up out of the water. I'm sure my pictures are ridiculous because I really couldn't focus and was just standing there with a stupid grin on my face. Oh well-I am sure they are used to that kind of reaction. :) I do wish my dad could have been there, though. Michael tried to take a video but the camera memory failed. Grrrr. My good friend Elizabeth and her husband were baptized right after me, which was so awesome. She said that my decision to do it helped HER make the decision to do it. How cool is that? You never know how your actions will influence someone else. Getting baptized was something I had wanted to do for a long, long, time...just never had the opportunity to figure out how to do it. I was never baptized as a child so this meant a lot to me, to make this public declaration at 25.

Saturday I walked 1.75 miles around Mary's Lake in Lawrence with my growth group. This group is exposing me to some amazing parts of Lawrence I never would have discovered on my own. It was so beautiful. The weather was perfect...chilly enough that we didn't overheat when we walked but not frigid. According to my heart rate monitor I burned 308 calories...which I took advantage of later that day. After the walk, Elizabeth and I got pedicures. Talk about heaven! I hope I can continue getting to know the amazing women in our group and have these mornings be a casual, fun place for us to get together.

Saturday afternoon, Michael and I went to see Paranormal Activity 2. It was definitely creepy, and had a few 'jumping in my seat' moments. Was it so scary that I had trouble sleeping? No. But definitely more eerie than a slasher horror flick. I used to dismiss these types of movies by simply not believing in supernatural activity. But I started thinking...if I believe in God, and in angels (which I do), and if I believe that angels can be on Earth...then wouldn't it stand to reason that the other side could be here as well? So that put a new spin on the movie, if you do believe that something paranormal like a demon could exist. I won't give away the plot of the movie, but after coming out of the theater, we are SO glad we don't have a basement. And that's all I'll say. ;)



This is why I needed to burn calories yesterday. Well, that, and the chicken tenders I had at the movie. It's a candy corn themed cupcake. Just white cake mix dyed orange and yellow, with homemade frosting and candy corns. I will be honest and say I wasn't too thrilled with the taste of the cake itself. I like a dense cupcake and these were really soft, the one I ate kind of crumbled. I hope that after they cooled overnight that they firmed up. I made these for the food table at church today. I mean, it is Halloween, after all. Gotta get in the spirit. ;)



So you can see the layers. Betty Crocker, I am not...but it was fun nonetheless.

Speaking of Halloween...that happens to be Michael's birthday! I think he had a pretty good, relaxing day. I let him open his presents early this morning...cards from me, my dad, his dad, his sister, my aunt, my sister, and my grandparents. His main birthday present from 'me' was a bunch of computer upgrades he did about a month ago, but I got him a little surprise: the Ocean's 11 trilogy. We love those movies and now that we've been to Vegas and the Bellagio, the first movie in particular is really fun. My dad went wild and got 15 dvd/blu rays from Michael's Amazon wishlist. I loooved his reaction when he opened the big box: "holy crap!" Love him. After I got home from church he sat with me in Panera while I had soup and we clipped coupons from the newspaper. We went to Target and get this: DIDN'T SPEND ANY MONEY. That is a major feat, friends. We wanted to look at their silver ware because I've got an itch to replace ours soon. We walked over to the Halloween section, which was being replaced with Christmas decor. Before you know it, they'll have that stuff out in the summer. We got some groceries for the week and have spent the rest of the day watching Apollo 13, Ocean's 11, a Robin Williams stand up comedy dvd, the Ghost Hunters Halloween special, and stopped only for dinner at La Parilla, a Latin/South American restaurant. I had a great time on his birthday, and I'm pretty sure he did, too.

SO, onward to a new week!