Black Bird, Black Friday & Back Flash

BLACK BIRD

Christopher's parents and sister drove down from Atlanta and his grandparents drove down from Cocoa, FL to celebrate Thanksgiving with us in our home this year. I was SO happy that I did not have to do any travelling during the busiest travel holiday of the year. Yeah! And I think our Thanksgiving weekend turned out pretty stinking awesome too. Our family arrived on Wednesday and we spent the evening enjoying each others company, eating Anthony's Coal-Fired Pizza (yum!), and getting ready for the "feast." Thursday morning my sister-in-law and I ran in a 5K Turkey Trot that our church was having (wish I had a picture!). And I do use the term "ran" loosely :-) Of course Chris was there to play football with the men (highlight of his year) and we all came home sore and exhausted. Jada spent more than a full hour standing on a small chair next to her Great Nana "helping" her make pies (most likely the highlight of her weekend).
Good thing Great Nana was there to cook just about all of the food! Except for the turkey - Chris put himself in charge of this one. He decided it would be much easier and more delicious (as he had tasted one before) to FRY our Thanksgiving Turkey. Yes, deep fry it in oil in a huge deep-fryer. Do we have one of these contraptions? Of course not. So Chris and his father disappear for most of the day to drive half an hour to our friend's house to borrow their deep-fryer. The women back at home have everything ready and we are just waiting for the boys to return with the turkey. Hours later, they return with this... They called us on the way home saying that they think something had gone a little wrong and they were really sorry. Hmmm...Needless to say I about strangled them when they walked into my nicely decorated Thanksgiving feast with a lump of black char. Literally, chalky, greasy, messy black char is disintegrating off of the bird in enormous chunks that break into hundreds of ashy pieces all over the counters, the table, the floor - EWWW!

Maybe you have seen one of these before or even eaten one. None of us had ever seen a deep-fried turkey before so we had no idea that it was going to be so - INCREDIBLE! Really, this turkey turned out to be the moistest, most flavorful, best-tasting turkey that any of us has ever had!

So we had a FABULOUS Thanksgiving Feast (honey, you were right - I was wrong, you are amazing, I will never doubt your cooking skills again...yada yada yada). Watch the video HERE.

My girlfriend Marney delivered her baby on this day too! How cool is that? What a Thanksgiving blessing. (P.S. he is adorable and I was baby hungry when I held him but that passed as quickly as it came on, thankfully. Yeah! Congrats Marney & Clark!)

Well, then we finished the evening by watching Elf - hilarious! It was an eventful, wonderful day.

BLACK FRIDAY

So my sis and I fell asleep for about an hour and a half before we woke up again and headed to this enormous outlet mall about 10 minutes from my house. I had heard that the mall opened up at midnight for Black Friday. I had read it on a sign in the mall a few days before but I hadn't heard any one talking about it nor had I ever heard anything about it for the past too years that we have lived here so I thought maybe it would be fun for us to go when the mall was kind of quiet. I could not have been more completely dead wrong! We were literally in a line of literally a hundred cars headed to the mall. I thought maybe they were going to get in line at Best Buy or Wal-Mart nearby but no - they were ALL going to the Sawgrass Mills Mall like us. Ridiculous. People were parked on the grass! It was pitch black! I kept thinking "these people are insane." Oh yeah, but I guess I was too. Well, we ended up shopping the night away and didn't get home until THREE O'CLOCK AM! Crazy. The sales were phenomenal though - entire outlet store prices were knocked down 50-70%!

We had a blast. We came home, slept for a few more hours and then got up and did it again at some other stores. Wow. I'm pretty sure that I'm a Black Friday shopper convert. Never done it before - but will probably never miss it again. Thanks Sis!

BACK FLASH (or really flash back)

Christopher left me on Friday to fly up to New York to attend his 10-year high school reunion. Sounds like he had a great time :-) I wish I would've gone too but it would've been much more expensive and then we have two girls who need watching...etc. It was a short trip anyways. I can't believe we are getting so old! Here he is in the SNOW! Of course its snowing in upstate New York. What I really need to do is post a high school picture of Chris or something. That would be funny. Stay tuned.

I hope that everyone had a fun Thanksgiving! I am full of gratitude for the countless blessings in my life; my wonderful family, amazing husband, our home, our faith, our jobs and for our incredible country. We are so fortunate to be Americans and live in a land of freedom and opportunity. God bless America and the servicemen and women who are still fighting to keep it that way!