Thanksgiving the Second

Hello Thanksgiving! Truth be told my favorite time of year is between Thanksgiving and New Years. I love the food of Thanksgiving, the fun and reasons for Christmas, the joys that come over the New Year, and then bam, January hits. I’m not a huge fan of January, sorry January, nothing against you and we can still be friends 😀.

Anyway, this year after I have a new found love of decorating sugar cookies, I thought I’d take my stab at Thanksgiving Sugar Cookies. I had no idea what I was going to do with them once they were baked/decorated, but by golly that wasn’t going to stop me. I sent them with my dad to work. He said his co-workers loved them and one even took what was left at the end of the day home. Yey :). Don’t worry, I ate 1 1/2 cookies. They were good 😁.

For Thanksgiving dessert, I chose a Cherry Pie. That was my initial thought even though we don’t have any cherries from our old Cherry tree, but then I found them, Sour (aka tart) Cherries at the store. I bought 4 packages. I only needed 1 but put the other 3 in the freezer for a rainy day. And that is a turkey on the top of my pie, not a Chicken. Just clarifying!

After selling our house and moving in with my parents, I’m back to using my mom’s stove for cooking. Her stove only has 2 burners (normal ovens have 4) so I decided to make our Green Bean Casserole the night before, then just reheat it in the oven day of. We don’t normally have Green Bean Casserole but we’re kind of on a healthy kick here at my house and I thought, well we needed a vegetable and we’ve eaten a lot of green beans so I went on the hunt for a “healthy” green bean casserole to change it up a bit. The one I found didn’t let us down!!

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Post “Turkey” Coma (Thanksgiving Part 1)

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that all your meals turn out as fabulous as our first Thanksgiving of the season did. Holy Wow! 1st Thanksgiving what? So, the NCHA futurity is going on in Ft. Worth, Texas right now and my uncle has some horses entered. When we started discussing Thanksgiving plans last month, we weren’t sure when he’d draw to show, plus the fact that this isn’t our year to have Tbug on Thanksgiving so we just decided to celebrate Thanksgiving last weekend. It was perfect.

There are 6 of us that headed to my aunts house in southern Oklahoma and right now we only have vehicles that will haul 5 people at a time so Abug, Mom, and I loaded up first thing Friday and drove down to AC & UB’s. Hubby took the day off to try his luck at deer hunting and be ready to pick Tbug up after school, come home and have chores done, pick dad up after work, and then they headed out. I should mention that they swung by J.L’s BBQ in Pryor (which is a little out of the way…..) for dinner before heading on to AC & UB’s but that’s okay 😘.

When AC & UB were up last month for a horse show, we ran to Sam’s Club and AC bought me a Cast Iron cookbook with the “stipulation” that I had to make something out of it for Thanksgiving. I decided to make the Orange Rolls (kind of like Cinnamon Rolls) for breakfast for Saturday morning. They were a little dry, but very good.

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Christmas Tree 2016

A lot of people will have an opinion that is not favorable for the fact that we put up our Christmas tree, but that’s okay. We’re happy and we’re still very excited to celebrate Thanksgiving. And also, my big thing is to make sure that Tbug is involved with decorating our tree. I always want her to feel included and this is a way that I make it a point…. So 2 weeks ago, yes 2 weeks ago we put up our Christmas tree. No, I haven’t forgotten about Thanksgiving!

Anyway… We actually bought a new tree at the end of last year. We went out the day after Christmas and actually found this tree at Lowe’s. It’s so friggin cool. So it is prelit but there aren’t cords you have to plug in together to light it all up. Instead once you place this piece to that, the plug in is in the tree base itself. Very cool. Only bad thing is there is not an easy way to get light to our tree topper, but it doesn’t fit anyway… hit the ceiling so we left it off. I do believe it needs a topper but I’m not sure what to do just yet.

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Bacon Wrapped Turkey

Backtrack with me a few years, 2011 to be exact. For YEARS and I’m talking YEARS I’ve wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve heard making a turkey is difficult to keep moist yet get thoroughly cooked, etc. 2011 I was given the opportunity to try. The year before if you’ll remember Pioneer Woman challenged Bobby Flay to a Thanksgiving Off (or whatever they called it).

I made her turkey, stuffing, etc. I almost made her exact meal, but not quite. Anyway, then I went on the hunt one day in 2012 for the perfect Turkey recipe. Does one even exist? Well, I think the answer is yes. I found a recipe for a Bacon Wrapped Turkey. I had the opportunity to make the 2012 Thanksgiving dinner as well, so I knew we were going to try this turkey.

I have to say, we’ve tried to change it up a bit, one year we smoked it, one year we forgot the bacon blanket, etc etc… but if you find something that works, why mess with it? Seriously!

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Horse ‘n Around on Halloween

After we went to the Trunk or Treat at the hospital, Abug and I met up with hubby and Jared and went down to our campground where we ride horses. They were having a Halloween shindig called Horse ‘n Around on Halloween (I think that’s what it was called anyway… lol). There was also a Costume contest and a Chili Feed. Jody brought JP down with her and we dressed the girls up, but we didn’t get any pictures of them in the costume parade. We then took them back, dressed them back in regular clothing and went for the Chili Feed.

Normally I don’t like chili but they made some without beans so I tried it. I must say, it was good. Part of the reason I “don’t like chili” is I ate a lot of it as a kid. I kind of burned out on it. That and we made it so spicy that one bite and your lips were ON FIRE. This was mild and really hit the spot!

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Halloween

Picture overload! Jody, her kiddos, my kiddo, and I went to a trunk or treat done by a local hospital. Then there was Halloween. Abug had the best time and this is really the first time she’s gotten the concept of Halloween. She had a bucket, said Trick or Treat, and Thank you. We missed a few of our friends, for that I’m sorry, but now… picture overload :).

And they’re off

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4th Annual Chili Cookoff – But remember the kids are the real winners!

Since I kind of took a small hiatus during October, I’m finally getting caught up with October goings on but I still have much to chat about… like the Chili Cookoff…

The Chili Cookoff was October 22nd. The day before we went out to Deb and Grady’s house to set up everything we could for the next day. I was fighting a horrendous cold so I tried to steer clear of people so I didn’t spread it although I was on the downhill slide of it. While Jared, Hubby, Karen, Deb, and SW set up, I sat at the patio table and set up an excel worksheet with the help of text messages/emails from my friend Kalem.

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It’s a Pumpkin Carving Party….

Why I call it a party I have no clue!

The end of September I happened to be at Sam’s and they had these big pumpkins for $8.88. I couldn’t help myself and had to buy them right then and there. Don’t believe me how big they are? Look at the picture of hubby carrying them below…. One of them we weighed for the pumpkin carving and it weighed in at 25lbs. When I found them at a greenhouse down the road, they would have been $50 or $60.

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The Tale of a Trip to the Vet

If there is one horse at my house that is loved more than any other horse, it would be Aloha. When it comes to kid broke horses, she’s there. Any horse can have an off day, but in the general realm of life, if she knows a kid is on her back, she’ll take care of them, point blank.

So a couple weeks ago I was sicker than a dawg (wonder where that phrase comes from and sadly I’m still not over this crap. I’m done with it, but that’s another story for another day I guess), but I woke up and realized my mom was outside with the horses talking on the phone. I wasn’t real sure what was going on. She came in the house, said she thought Aloha had broken her leg and we were headed to the vet.

I jumped to, got the Bug and me dressed, carseat switched over to the truck, truck hooked up to the trailer, horse loaded, and away we went. We had to hustle because we were supposed to be there by 11, vet is about 45-50 minutes away and it was a quarter to 10 already.

We got loaded up, I said a quick prayer that dad’s truck wouldn’t let us down (it’s had problems from time to time), and away we went. I pulled into the vet clinic with 2 minutes to spare. Dad met us there, we unloaded Aloha, and the vet’s went to doing their thing.

First they did X-rays to see if the bone was broken. After they concluded that it wasn’t, they then pulled out the ultrasound to see what was going on inside. They concluded that it was either a pulled Tendon or Ligament. That’s a lot easier to deal with than a broken bone! Our 2 options

  1. Stall Rest, cold watering twice a day, bute twice a day (like Tylenol to help with pain), and hand walking
  2. Head to Peculiar, MO, to a huge horse facility up there and let them do further extensive studying on the leg to make it better.

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