Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy belated Thanksgiving everybody! We had a great weekend, starting out with a great Thanksgiving breakfast at Mimi and Grandpa's which held us over until the big feast down at the lake with Gram and Poppy and the gang.

More pictures to come, but here are the kids meeting Santa, who arrived by yacht. It looks like is Sadie is crying, but she's really just yelling "I love you sooooo much Santa!!!" Jake asked for a racecar, and a babydoll for his sister.

Duck House

Last night Grandpa and Mimi took the kids for a sleepover, and Ali and I decided to get some dinner at Mark's Duck House. It's a Hong Kong style Dim Sum place that has great food and that we haven't been to in a couple of years. So we arrive at 6 and the place is empty and we realize we're still eating at kid-dinner-time, even though we're kid-less for the evening. So we take our time reading the menu and wondering what to get. The waiter comes over and Ali orders the Duck Moo Shoo which is the best I've ever had, and I ask for advice, since the menu is 15 pages and mostly in Chinese. He says they have some "very special, very special oysters from Pa See Fic Ocean in ginger garlic sauce" so I follow his advice. The oysters were great, and bigger than any oyster I'd ever seen before. They were the size of soup bowls.

Ali's Duck arrived and they prepare each pancake for you at the table and we chatted with him a bit about the food:

"So, how many ducks do you roast a day?"
"About 200."
"Wow! 200?!"
"Well, we duck house"
"Oh, right"

Thanksgiving Feast

Here's Jake giving his stock "smile" for his class picture today. They had a Thanksgiving feast show where all the three-year-old classes sang songs and dressed up as Indians, Pilgrims and Pumpkins. It was pretty cute, and once again there were more cameras than a Britney Spears paparazzi detail. I couldn't quite make out all the song lyrics, but there was one about an Albuquerque Turkey that when Jake sang later for me turned into the "Albaturkey turkey", which still rhymed.

Where's the Snow??

We've got the cold weather, we've got our coats, mittens and gloves. All we need now is some SNOW!!!

Paci Wars II

We first tried to retire Jake's pacifiers on his 3rd birthday, and it was a disaster. This past weekend, I casually mentioned to Jake that when he was ready, we could give his pacifiers to the Paci Fairy and she would leave him a treat. The next night, he said he was ready. He went to bed just like a normal night, and we didn't hear from him again. Until 1:00 am. And then 4:00 am.

The next night, it was a repeat of five months ago: screaming, crying, and assorted drama. After a half hour, he finally passed out. And slept through the night. The past two nights have gone the same way. It's almost like he's in withdrawal from a drug. He's just hysterical and not himself at all. And he's not even asking for pacifiers, he just can't calm himself down. It's physically and psychologically draining for us. But I'm impressed that we haven't given in and brought the pacifiers back out, as much as we'd like to. Looking at toddler chat rooms, it sounds like most parents went through similar withdrawal battles, lasting a few nights or a few weeks. I'm afraid Jake will be in the 'weeks' category.

Saturday Adventure

On Saturday we headed out west to see Dinosaur Land, a kitschy 50's style exhibit of dinosaurs in their natural environs - the backyard of an old motel near Rt. 81. Here we are in the jaws of a prehistoric shark:


Sadie loved everything about this place. We weren't technically supposed to climb on the dinosaurs, but I couldn't keep her off. In fact, I had to drag her away from this one kicking and screaming.
And King Kong was there too, because....why not? After driving an hour out to Dinosaur Land and spending only about 20 minutes wandering the grounds, we did a quick search to see what else there was to do nearby. Ali came up with the Route 11 potato chip factory, which was a nice scenic drive down the road. Here we are driving through a covered bridge on our way there:


Anyone know why there are covered bridges? Check here if you're as curious as we were. The Route 11 chip factory was a small operation, but we got to watch them slicing the potatoes and then see the chips fry in giant vats of peanut oil. Then, the chips rode a conveyor belt upstairs where seasonings were added before they were dropped into the bagging chute. It was a fun little tour, and we got to sample all the different varieties of chips.

They asked what brought us out that way and we told them we'd come from Dinosaur Land. Then they told us we really should check out the American Celebration exhibit just down the road. So, we hopped back in the car, not quite knowing what to expect. It turns out, this is the company that makes all the parade floats for the inaugural parades, as well as other parades like the Rose and Thanksgiving Day parades. The warehouse was packed with all kinds of floats and displays. Here are a few shots:
And after that, we went through their exhibit of old storefront displays from the 50's and 60's. And for that last bit of randomness, they also had a goat:

Fun day. Check out more pictures here.

Poppy Pumpkin

Poppy and Gram came up last week to help out while I was in Tampa, and they took the kids over to Cox Farms one afternoon. Here they are posing in front of Poppy Pumpkin.


And here they are, uh.......um.........I'm not sure what's going on here.