It's Christmas! Another Day Another Feast

Christmas Day Dinner is served!

It was to be a casual and easy-going Christmas Day with a feast planned for mid-afternoon.  It would be just the three of us, Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar - wise guys all, and one who actually came from the East.  Christmas Day promised another menu featuring more of my favorites (since I had a hand in planning the menu - nice how it works out that way as an adult); there would be a rib roast (rare), asparagus, sweet potatoes and a crusty baguette to sop up the oil and vinegar on small plates poured over freshly grated garlic cloves served with a Pinot Noir from Oregon (in honor of our Oregonian daughter who was unable to join the feast here in Texas).

For dessert, we of course could have more than our fair share of Christmas stocking-stuffer candies, but the 'Big To-Do' was to break out the fondue pot and top off the feast with strawberries, pineapple and morsels of angel food cake dipped in the pot of melted dark chocolate and liqueur.

Once the tablecloth is removed - I wouldn't trust myself with messy chocolate either
We dip our tongs of fruit and cake into the molten chocolate
Could be the start of a new tradition

Merry Christmas and to all a good respite!

  

  

Christmas Morning - barely

Grant, home for the holiday, but tagged to put in some hours through Christmas Eve as he worked remotely on his laptop computer and electronically filed his work at Wall Street 24/7 in order to keep the news presses rolling.  Once work was complete, it was Christmas time and time for bed after the Christmas Eve feast.

Following his typical schedule since we was just a small fellow, Grant would be in no rush to trundle downstairs on Christmas Morning to paw through the piles of Santa's largess doled out to every good boy and girl.  The gift of sleeping-in is a now a precious gift and one easily given around here.

Christmas morning would start once all had assembled according to their own schedule, so Christmas Morning was well nigh unto Christmas Afternoon.

It was cool outside on Christmas Day, but not what most Texans would even consider cold, but a request was made for a 'Christmas fire' to blaze away in the living room hearth, and so it was.  Now, the mood is set, let the festivities and the joy begin!

His mother sewed his name over a
Christmas Stocking belonging to his Father.
Traveling light from NYC, Grant did not have a
repository for Santa's gifts on Christmas Morning

Sue gets a couple of bottles of oil and vinegar to
be poured onto a rugose plate of grated garlic cloves.
These will come in handy for the
Christmas Day feast in a few hours.

A good surprise by the guess on Sue's face

Grant gets a single large gift as he is
'carry-on limited'
for his return to New York on the 27th

A dress over coat
Good for his walk from NYC subway to Lexington Ave.

  

Hook 'Em Horns!
Lookin' good for Bevo
Texas will upset and defeat #5 Georgia in Sugar Bowl in a few days.
Must be the new lucky hat

Our Christmas Tree
The boughs are bright and merry
The gifts beneath the boughs have been unwrapped.
It was a good Christmas

As has been my tradition for the past 3 years, I have given some small gifts at Christmas time to my two young Turkish friends, Tahir and Fatih who live next door.  And these gifts have been reciprocated by their mother, Kubra, who bakes us a treat from her kitchen to be delivered by her boys.

This year, Fatih rang our door bell and when I answered, Fatih asked me, "Mark, are you open?"  I told him with a big smile, "Yes, we are open today!"  He stood there on the stoop and looked inside for a while and I tried to make small talk and he looked for a way to gracefully exit and report back to his mother that we were open.  He then decided the time was right, and announced, "I will come to your house with something", and the bolted across the lawn and fallen leaves to his house.  In a few moments, Tahir appeared with a hand made pizza for us and we all thanked him and his brother Fatih who was now hiding behind our front hedge.  We exchanged a wishes for a Merry Christmas and the small Muslim contingent bounded back home.

We will get to that pizza after we have our Christmas Day feast.

Kubra's Christmas Pizza sits on our counter top
as Sue makes homemade eggnog.

The Feast on Christmas Eve

My memories of dinner on Christmas Eve are of meals appropriate for the Holy Family as they slept in mean estate in a stable of animals in the little town of Bethlehem, for there was no room in the inn for Joseph and Mary, who was with child, to stay.  My mother served us hot dogs or pizza on Christmas Eve, for we were perennially in a rush to get to the children's service at church, light our candles with real open flame and move out into the San Joaquin Valley's thick Tule Fog while singing Silent Night.  Hot dogs and/or pizza was quick to prepare and serve and besides who wanted food?  It was Christmas Eve! and that is when the Sunesons (claiming Swedish tradition) opened the gifts under the tree.  Santa would bring more gifts that night to be discovered on Christmas Day. My mother, who spent two years in Puerto Rico as a missionary, would remind us that in Puerto Rico gifts were exchanged on January 6th, El Dia de Los Reyes, the Day of the Three Kings.  Even though I could see the connection to gifts and the visit of the magi (wisemen or kings); I thought, those poor Puerto Ricans, they have to wait until next year to get their Christmas presents; sure glad I'm an American.

Anyway, we've ended up doing thing different around here, one step forward, one step back.  Somehow, long ago our kids seemed to think it was cheating on Jesus to open the gifts under the tree on Christmas Eve, so we have for years waited until Christmas Day.  But, we no longer boil a package of hot dogs on Christmas Eve for dinner; no, now we eat in a manner more fitting of King Herod.

Grant had made plans to fly in from his home in New York City to see the old folks for Christmas.  Being somewhat junior on the Wallstreet 24/7 staff when he asked for the 23rd through the 27th off, his easy going boss said, sure, have a Merry Christmas.  However, his easy going boss did not check the vacation schedule, so Grant later learned from his boss that he could keep and use his airline tickets to come to Texas - just he'd have to work remote on the 24th and 26th (i.e. no real Christmas Vacation).

Grant landed a quarter-hour before midnight on the 23rd, and with no carry on luggage, we whisked out of Terminal E at DFW an on to the neighborhood What-A-Burger, now a tradition for his arrival back on Texas soil.

Sue had a low-key role for the Christmas Eve children's service that night of the 24th.  She left around 3:30 in the afternoon to get ready for her role in the sanctuary.  Meanwhile, the two of us had splurged on gourmet feast ingredients at Central Market earlier the previous day.

A visit to the upscale grocery store
and we return with oysters and a new oyster shucking knife.
I got to be a quicker shucker as I worked through the pile of oysters.

It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, Grant was returning home, it is a holiday, it is Jesus' birthday and let us have a merry Christmas starting about now!  It was to be seafood feast, we picked up 3 Alaskan Snow Crab clusters, 9 Gulf Coast oysters, 10 large scallops and 1.4 lbs of steamer clams (one more clever than I could imagine fitting this shopping list into the 12 Days of Christmas song).  We had artichokes and garlic butter and a crusty sourdough bread with a nice Loire Valley white French wine on our menu.

Grant and Sue assemble the silver centerpiece
While Mark is preparing the
four course seafood feast

I asked Grant to put together the silver candelabra for our feast table, but he realized the disassembled centerpiece was missing a critical part.  So that project was put on hold, awaiting Sue's return to see where the missing part might be located, since she had removed all of the pieces from their cloth bag so the bag could be used as a treasure-bag prop in the children's Christmas Play the week before.  Once she returned from the Holy Land, we produced the missing part and the two set about to assemble an elegant centerpiece for the feast.

Oysters Markafeller
ready for the oven

Mmmm. Baked Oyster for
Christmas Eve Feast

While Sue went to work to distribute gifts and the Gospel at church, I stayed behind to prepare for the Christmas Eve feast.  Most of the entree items were easy-prep items: boil the crab legs for several minutes, remove; put clams in steamer rack above pot of boiling water, remove.; put 3 artichokes in steamer for 60 minutes, remove.  The oysters were to be a new one for me, Oyster Rockefeller required ingredients such as spinach and 2 pounds of salt on which to bake the mollusks.  I modified the dish into Oysters "Markafeller", a sauce of minced garlic, butter and melted Romano cheese with some cilantro spooned over the oysters in half-shell and baked for 6 minutes (without the underlying slat bed).  Scallops, my favorite food of all, were in need of full attention as I browned them lightly in a skillet of butter and seasoned with a few sprigs of fresh thyme from our own garden.  I though it all turned out pretty well, even the extra garlic and cilantro I thought was an improvement over the traditional Oysters Rockefeller. 

The table is set for feasting

The Four Advent Candles are lit at the center of the table
and the Christ Candle is lit this Christmas Eve

Mark and the oysters and crab arrive at the feast

Oysters with garlic and cilantro and scallops with thyme
grace the Christmas Eve table

The feast has been prepared!
Come and rejoice!

Three out four aint bad
Christmas Eve without hot dogs

 We welcomed the Christ Child, The Light Who Came Into the World; we gave thanks for all that we have and asked God's blessing upon all who are dear to us but not at our table.  A toast to a very Merry Christmas!

'Twas The Night Before Christmas...

'Twas the night before Christmas

and all through the house,

not a creature was stirring -

not even a mouse. 

(or in our particular case, a tortoise) 

The non-stirring state of the household pets has been going on around here since mid-October when we opened the back patio door and our two Desert Tortoises came marching in on a fine, sunny and warm fall late afternoon as if they had business inside.  Apparently they did have business indoors as they had the demeanor of determined domestic pets looking for a spot to settle in and hibernate until March.

We let Isaac and Chomper in to have a look around and I suspected that they would tire of the search and want to go back outside shortly, fully expecting, based on past experience, that it would take this pair a few starts over the coming week before they were ready to hunker down and drop into deep hibernation sleep.  We both watched in puzzled amusement as both tortoises by-passed the kitchen corners where I had placed their custom hibernation boxes (which they used last year) and headed down the hall toward the master bathroom.  Chomper and Isaac piled in behind the toilet and quickly dropped into motionless hibernation states.  That was quick.  They both have their favorite parts of the house, Isaac prefers the kitchen and Chomper nearly always makes his way to the dinning room. But never before have they shown any interest in the master bath.  At least not until this October.

After a few days, I removed Isaac to his custom spiced maple hibernation quarters where he comfortably sighed and eased into his mid-winter's nap.  I could have placed Chomper in his own box as well, but he looked so awkwardly sound asleep with his head tucked into the toilet cleaning brush receptacle that I was reluctant to disturb his amusingly chosen spot for the next 5 months.  Besides, I find it quirky and charming to have a hibernating reptile sharing our water closet.

We acquired a couple of other tortoise siblings from my sister and brother-in-law about that same time in October, and the new additions, Morpheus (a restless, slow to settle type) and Vortexia.  Vortexia has taken the vacant spot in Chomper's box while Morpheus remains in the cardboard moving box in which he arrived.

For now, all through the house not a creature is stirring -- but we will have some interesting tortoise dynamics to deal with come March and through out the Summer of 2019.

Double Whammie Christmas Crud

Maybe it was too much elf dancing.
Maybe it was that the old magic has worn off.
Maybe it was too little eggnog too late.
Or, maybe it was just the way it was going to be - no matter what the reason.

The tree was up, the house smelled pleasantly of pine, the lights twinkled and I was pleased.  Then I awoke in the wee hours and felt something in the back of my throat.  I thought, "just go back to sleep, this is something that you can fight off with your own mental powers." No big.

I can home from work early on Monday.  I was not well.

I dragged myself upstairs and voluntarily quarantined myself in the guest bedroom.  I would await my death in dark silence, or I would emerge triumphant. No one checked on me, I lay and slept with fevered dreams alone, fighting my moral failings for allowing myself to be overcome with fever and lung congestion.

I got up and tried to do a little work back at the office on Tuesday.  I thought, what is the point of all of this unproductivity? You'd be better off in bed.  I agreed with myself (as usual) and returned to my sequestered existence in the upstairs guest bedroom.

Late past twilight, when it was already dark, I woke to pee.  There were no lights on in the house.  Who needs lights?  It is a short trip down the hallway to the toilet and then back to the guest bed.

I slumped through the door of my space of convalescence, ready to get back to bed, I threw myself back onto the pillow - eventually. What I had not counted on in my fevered half-conscience state in a somewhat unfamiliar space was that in the short trajectory between where my feet were beside the bed and the fall-line trajectory I casually calculated to place my head back on my sick pillow; there happened to be a bureau placed next to the bed.  It was dark, I think my eyes were closed, and when I dropped to where the pillow was, I was intercepted by that bureau, which has a sharp right-angle corner between where my head was and where my head was headed.  In an instance I was reminded of the furniture placement inside the dark guest room.

Ouch. I wished I had not done that.

I lay on my back for a moment feeling the smarts of hard furniture on my right eye socket.  Then I felt my eye socket fill will warm fluid.  What a bother, now I'm bleeding.  This usually means I am a good candidate to pass out into deeper darkness once I see my own blood.  However, since it was dark and I had no mirror, I was in luck - I had no way of seeing my own blood flowing onto my skin. I moved quick since I was lying on a newly acquired pure white duvet on the guest bed - imagine the bloodshed if I had the audacity to bleed on our new white duvet. I was able to throw myself back out of bed (avoiding the bureau this time) and stride into the bathroom and wad a fistful of toilet paper over my right eye.  A good and prudent first step.

I poured myself downstairs in the dark, stumbled to the laundry closet where I fished one-handedly for a rag and then shuffled to the freezer to grad an ice cube.  I put the ice inside the old rag sock and went and sat in the dark corned at the dining room table.  My wife came in from after work shopping. Noticed me and asked "what are you doing there in the dark?"
Trying to stop the bleeding I mentioned in a casual tone.
Not one to panic, she told me stay right there - "I have to pee".
I did not move.  She did what she needed to do. 

She put the groceries away and turned on the light, found some band aides (I wanted dinosaur band aides - but we were out. I was told I'd have to get used to disappointment) and stuck them to my eye lid telling me I had a big gash in a very hard place for her to manage first aid. I was not all that sorry for being so inconsiderate and bleeding, I thought she'd have to get used to disappointment - but I thought the better of saying it aloud).  I asked her to check the white duvet.  It was thankfully blood free, I only had a few drops of blood fall on the bathroom linoleum.  I had not fainted on my travel downstairs and I was feeling proud of my stamina.

Still suffering with fever, I went to the doctor the next morning and told him I was not feeling well.  He looked at my right eye and the fresh scab and asked if I'd been lipping off to my wife?  I admitted it was all my own doing, me tangling with the guest room bureau.  He gave me some antibiotics - even though we both knew I probably had a virus.  But it was just in case there might be another cause for my illness. He cheerfully diagnosed my suffering as "You've got the Christmas Crud". I paid my $40 co-pay as I left his office with a script and a diagnosis.

I was never pretty.  With my new owie, my looks were not improved.

It was a Double Whammie: Christmas Crud and a cut eye beating.

Man eyes bureau in the dark-
Not a pretty sight

This double whammie set my Christmas shopping and decorating way back.  But like Rocky Raccoon (The Beatles, 'White Album'); Doc it's only a scratch and I'll be better, I'll be better as soon as I am able.

Tree Hunt

It was a dark and stormy night...

So goes the opening line for many a great adventure; and so began our annual Tree Hunt adventure, a trip to Kadee Farms to choose and cut our Christmas Tree for 2018.  It was a dark and stormy night on Thursday, December 13, as the local meteorologist showed us his weather radar filled with orange, red and green swirling over Dallas dropping an inch of rain and then moving east-northeast into Hunt County, the location of Kadee Farms, a place where we have cut our Christmas Tree for three decades.  We had purposed to go get our tree on Friday, thus clearing the calendar for busy weekend of Christmas Programming that Sue had immediately ahead of her as Director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church.  The formerly mentioned meteorologist has told us that the rain would have moved off to Louisiana by daybreak on Friday and we thought that was enough of a window to drive 50 miles east for a fresh tree.  It was a dark and stormy night... that lingered on into Friday as the weather system stalled and moved out slowly to the east, leaving us to gear-up with mud-boots, thick jackets for the 45 degrees with a brisk, north wind that made the dampness penetrate our skin all the more sharply.

For fortification, and for the sake of a long family tradition, we stopped for a barbecue lunch at Big Daddy's out on Highway 78 before we continued on to Kadee Farms.  Since it was a week day, Mr. Kadee would not open until 2:30, so we reversed our tradition and got the ribs before the tree; whereas we normally would get the tree on a Saturday afternoon and then get the ribs and brisket for an early dinner on the way home.

Sue is bundled and armed for the Tree Hunt
Our 3rd Decade at Kadee Farms

We had the wind-swept, puddled and muddy tree farm to ourselves as we studiously marched through muck to eyeball each tree within our 5 to 7 foot height range preference. My wife thought that the whipping and biting wind and gray sky was a marvelous set of conditions to be looking for a Christmas Tree, she yelled out, "I love this!  This is the way it should be!" We had narrowed our search to three candidates across the acreage, and circled around to each candidate analyzing the color, the shape, the symmetry, the straightness, the tapering of the topmost star-holding area and the height.  A Selection was made by the two of us well-insulated tree hunters and then my partner took a look at the muddy grass surrounding our tree and handed me the saw and said, "I'll let you do the cutting this year babe. Start right about there." As she pointed to a place on the trunk a few inches above the ponded water and weeds.

Dead needles and shaken from the branches
of our newly selected Christmas Tree

Wild Woman of the East Texas Christmas Forest

It was an especially good choice of tree this year.






















We set her in her fancy-pants tree stand and turned the 4 set screws to hold her into place, balanced and with symmetrical perspective.  Add water and wait for the elves to decorate it.  

In from the cold.  The Kadee Farms warming shack.
Hot cider is offered while the tree is cleaned and processed.

The elf came on Sunday when Sue was at work, to string up the tiny multi-colored lights.  The elf, being old and wise, plugged in each of the light strings to test their worthiness before wrapping them around the evergreen boughs. Once the elf had tested and thrown out one bad string of lights, the rest were place on the tree.  When the wise old elf threw the switch, the top and the bottom string remained unlit, while the center of the tree twinkled and glowed appropriately.  The old elf did his magic bringer-of-light dance around the green needles, throwing his hands in the mid-winter air wildly and chanting in elfish words that I can not transcribe here (as they are secret and sacred - or I am told).  He danced well enough to get the top string to twinkle soon enough. But his magic - or more likely, his dancing, was not quite up to snuff and the lower string remained dark and cold.  The wise old elf then skipped off to Walmart and found a whole aisle of brand new lights in need of no magic dances and bought a handful of them home for a mere $2.74 each.  It is a small Christmas Miracle.

Our Christmas Tree
Resplendent in Old Elf Magic and Lit by Magic Dancing

While the old and wise Interior Design Elf was suitably pleased with his magic, his dancing and his trip to Walmart, he skipped right on out the door and proceeded to wrap up the shrubbery and ash tree outside the house with his lights.  Some of the old C-9 bulbs that are almost as ancient as the elf (going back to the 1970's) had lost their magic and they were given to the trolls for who-knows-what- purpose.  But a few of the $2.74 box of lights were joyously wound around the trunk of the tree amongst the old C-9 bulbs that still had some magic inside.  It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here chanted the old elf as he danced until his red suspenders could hold up his pants no longer - and then he stopped and went home.  And it was another Christmas Miracle.

Elf lights in the front yard

Aloha! The Big 5-0h

On the Official (Black Friday) Birthday my presence was delivered to good friends.
My birthday presents would be delivered on Sunday - 3 days after the fact.

I am true believer in delayed gratification.  If I had totally cancelled any and all whispers of a birthday celebration, I would claim full heirship of my Calvinist roots, but I only delayed the gratification; a back-sliding Calvinist I seem to be.

Aloha! The Big 5-0h (+11) was a quiet affair at home.  Every year I get to dream up a custom cake to be baked by my adoring wife after she has done an exhaustive search of the internet for wild pinterest-type baking ideas.  Some of which are half-baked.


This year's dream was for a raspberry infused chocolate cake.  Thrown into the mix of fun ideas, was the baker's itch to use the just acquired set of tiered cake pans from my parent's basement in Montana.  Adoring wife Sue was on it.  She selected a Norwegian cream cake with raspberry filling between each of the tiers.

 Whoa. I see we are going to put some candles on these cake tiers, how many candles are you planning to ignite on this pagoda of personal pleasure?  Thankfully, we do not have enough candles to correspond to each of the previous years.

It is a flaming marvel!  Sue wields it out of the kitchen with justifiable pride.

I take a big huff an then I give a big puff - and defying all expectations, all of the candles instantly become a smoldering taper of wax.  Well done old man.

Custom Cake comes with what is promoted as 'the perfect gift'.  

Something that she knows I will cherish and and which will give me an instant sense of happiness, it will be the mantle of a 'free spirit' and infuse my countenance with the breezy, foot loose ways of the tropics.  

What is it?

Let the unwrapping reveal the bright pleasure of the islands! Ready?

It is beautiful!

Hang loose ol' dude!

Bring on the Hula Girls!
Let me have another Mai Tai - I feel like a kid again

  

Black Friday Birthday

My 11 year-old friend, Tahir, who lives next door came came by my front door to say thank you for his birthday gift which I had delivered to him on the 21st.  He then asked me, "Mark, when is your birthday?"  I told him, and then his eyes lit up, "Wow! Your birthday is on Black Friday!" -- Yes, so it is. Amazingly enough, and yet I had failed to fully recognize the wonder of this coincidence.

I have done enough of these birthdays, that I can allow for other, perhaps more pressing needs, desires and duties to nudge out the normal hoopla and most gladly not give in to the insanity of Black Friday.  Now, let me see what is on my calendar for my birthday.  First, I will need to rise at 5:45 AM.  Is not this hour a bit late for the 'door buster' megastore duzzy?  Perhaps, but I am not going anywhere near the lines of maniac insomniacs for a big screen TV, we are setting our coordinates for DFW airport.  Grant, having spent a brief Thursday/Thanksgiving with us, has a 9:04 flight scheduled back to Laguardia.  Happy Birthday Dad! and he is off to find the TSA line and we quickly say our good-byes, and pull away from the curb.  Noting the low level of traffic at the airport on the busiest flying times of the year.  It is a gift - a Black Friday Birthday gift for my personal enjoyment.

Sue offers to take me out for a birthday breakfast.  I say, "Yo, I'm down with that", trying to sound younger than I really am, but immediately regret not acting my age.  I'm looking for a senior discount with which I can get down with - or something like that.  Anyway, Black Friday Birthday Breakfast sounds good to me.  My choice is our favorite intimate brunch spot and it is on the way back from the airport, so I guide the car to Cafe Brazil.  I have the classic breakfast, eggs over easy and with a half-dozen fruit-filled pan crepes in between the bacon and eggs.

After licking my fingers, we head home; but not to put on my party pants.  No there are some needful things that we have opted to put higher on our priorities list this day, we will be paying an extended social call on our great friends in East Texas, Donna and Kirby McCord.  

The McCords have just been pulled through a knothole. They were guest at our house at the end of October for their daughter Brianna's wedding in Dallas [cf A Wedding Inside of a Circus Wrapper in a Silver Lining blog].  During the business end of the wedding preparations, Donna's 94 year-old father fell from a fractured pelvis.  Donna's family did not handle this crisis well, and a cloud of incrimination, high lunacy embossed with greed immediately ensued.  Donna focused on the wedding, but was acutely aware that her father was in mortal decline.  He father's life ebbed away on the Monday before Thanksgiving.  Donna saw this as a blessing.

Kitchen Processors
Donna, Sue & Brenda talk over the events of the week 

But to compound the loss and the misery back in the land of the living, her younger brother was observed by another motorist to pull off the highway and then collapse.  The trailing motorist, a health professional, immediately began CPR.  It was 20 minutes before the paramedics arrived to take him to the hospital.  The news received by Donna was conflicting, but none of the details were good.  Brother Gus was on a ventilator, but there was little or no brain activity.  Gus' 19 year-old son was thrust into making critical medical decisions for his father in his mid-50's in the swirling toxic family atmosphere.  

Pomegranate Grabber
Sue in the thick of the Harvest

Donna reaps her fruit

Knowing that our friends were overloaded with grief and anxiety in the middle of Thanksgiving, we joined with Brenda to go out to rally around the McCords and prepare a holiday meal for them all.  Besides, Donna could use some expert help with the annual pomegranate harvest on their estate.

Out at the McCords, it was a setting where the autumn oaks were golden and the weather was crisp and the fellowship around the kitchen counter and dining tables was restorative.  It was definitely a worthy Black Friday with deep feelings and fine friends, we never once gave a thought to the inane retail acquisition excess happening back in the city. 

Pomegranate Harvest laid out on Iron Stone

Fallen Autumn Oak Leaves

A Beaming Grove of Golden Oaks
Catch the Autumnal Afternoon Light

 It was not a typical birthday party of cake, ice cream and party hats and presents with attention centered on me.  It was a very good and satisfying day of needful things and fellowship.  It was one of the the best birthdays of my life.

I am glad that my needed presence was well received, rather than needing to receiving my presents.

Giving Thanks

We've had an Indian Summer come at the end of October after a few weeks of water-logging weather patterns.  November begins on the cool side of the thermometer, but gradually climbs to normal and descent patterns.  It was a quiescent meteorological map when Grant caught his flight out of Laguardia Airport in NYC to fly to Dallas for a brief visit.  We give thanks for his time here.

Grant's schedule brings him through the gate at DFW's Terminal C a little after 10 PM on Wednesday night and it will require him to depart Terminal C early Friday morning.  He is traveling light as he has no need to pack much clothing for his short stay, but we have a lot of miles and food to pack into the next 31 hours.  

Let's get going:

Item No. 1: Land in Dallas and head straight for What-A-Burger for dinner.  Actually What-A-Burger is more than a dinner, it is the birthright for this native Texan and a mighty fine way to pay homage for a returning native son.  He has enjoyed (and even raved about) the many culinary offerings that are found in New York, but a return to Texas soil requires a stop at the A-framed orange and white temple to the quintessential burger(s) of the Lone Star State.  Grant sacrificed an A-1 Thick 'n Hearty Burger to his Texan taste buds and followed this offering with a drink offering of Dr. Pepper along with a prayer of Thanks.  The Land and the sojourner were again united and all was well before we all headed off to bed a slip before the midnight hour.

Glenda and her mother Nan
Our consummate hostesses
For Thanksgiving 2018

With the stroke of 12 it became Thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving had been mostly arranged weeks earlier when Glenda, the mother of Grant's girlfriend Kaileen, had graciously invited the three of us once again to their home near Houston.  Kaileen had arrived home a day earlier, and we would see her and her parents and Glenda's parents, Nan and Wiley at the feasting table that afternoon.  

And what a table and what a spread it was!

We packed ourselves and a couple of Sue's homemade pies (spiced pumpkin and pecan) into the car and headed the 226 miles south (~3 1/2 hours) to where warm greetings and warm eatings awaited us.  We were welcomed in, this, the third time in the last four years and it now feels almost like home for us Sunesons.

Glenda and Sue check the progress of the food preparations

A brief interlude of settling kitchen coordination 

Tranquility and Tasty Perfection Reigns Supreme in the Kitchen

Sue, Grant, Kaileen and Wiley
Shuffling their Feet and Licking their Chops
Waiting for the 'Let's Give Thanks' Signal
and then the
'Let's Eat!' Signal

Grandma 'Nanna Nan', Kaileen and Grant

The Table before the Feast

 Glenda had been working long on preparing a most magnificent spread for the eight of us (Kaileen's brother was in Virginia as an Americore trainee working in the National Forest Management Program and unable to join us other than by phone).  We were sorry that Conner missed out, as we had a delicious moist turkey, ham and brisket, a chunky and mildly tart [the way I prefer it] cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy, mac & cheese, sweet corn casserole, fruit ambrosia, pickled beets [another favorite of mine] with rolls placed on top of food and a few more items that helped crowd out the last open space on my plate, along with a choice of wines.  We gave thanks, we enjoyed every last bit and every blessing that was placed before us.

L to R: Sue, Nan, Wiley, Greg, Glenda, Kaileen and Grant
A Big, Bountiful and Blessed Thanksgiving!

Fortunately everyone had seen
Sue's homemade pies make their entrance -
So we had enough room for our choice of
Pecan or Pumpkin - or BOTH!

While Grant was flying from New York on Wednesday evening, Sue had finished up at work and scurried home to roll out a couple of pie crusts and get her promised desserts ready for an 8 AM departure on Thursday morning.  She tried a new method of pumpkin pie making this year.  To high acclaim, she ground whole spices fresh just before mixing them into the filling [this was instead of using previously ground and packaged spices from the typical supermarket shelf; it made a noticeable improvement].  We all experienced the rich and full taste of those spices on the first bite - and even before the first bite we could smell something good.  

Grant and Kaileen
Digesting in the living room after the feast

Wherever and Whenever Families gather, 
Families will pull out their phones and photograph.
No exceptions here.

Sue sets her phone/camera settings
as we gather poolside in the back
under sunny 65 weather

Nan asks that someone take a photo

Nan wants you, you and you to stand next to Kaileen
We eagerly comply

Greg, Glenda, Kaileen and Grant

Kaileen's whole family (except Conner)
Wiley, Nan, Glenda, Kaileen and Greg

Kaileen joins with the Sunesons

Hey! What's that? 

This could be fun

Grant has to be at the Dallas airport by 7 AM tomorrow, which means we have another 3 1/2 hour drive back north on I-45 after a wonderful afternoon.  We said our good byes and had parting hugs as we carried a load of lovely food scraps back out the door.  We snacked on the leftovers that Glenda packed for us once we got home at 10.  However, we will need to be up at 5:45 AM [So this is what Black Friday feels like?] to get Grant to DFW.   

It all went well and it was all, all so good.
We are Thankful.