Turkey Harvest

This post is not for the faint of heart or weak in stomach. If you are an animal love you may want to skip this post. You've been warned.

The proud farmer and his friends Jeff and Chris.

The aftermath.
I had an awesome video of them catching a turkey, but it is too big for our slow internet connection so I can't upload it. So sad.

Joe, the one with the most experience, and Jared my nephew who is so strong and brave to hold down that turkey.

The huge pot where you dip the turkeys in hot water so they are easier to pluck. Also, in this picture, our beloved friends from Lagos, Jeff and Kelsey. We were so happy and so lucky that a business trip brought them through Washington DC of all places so they came and spent a day with us. Luckily for them, it was on turkey harvest weekend. They were actually excited which I guess shows we are meant to be friends.

Bagged up and ready to go. The turkeys weighed in at the following:

Males - 40, 38, 36

Females - 28, 26, 19

We are cooking the 38 pounder for Thanksgiving. Wish us luck because it is going to be an undertaking! We are brining today and cooking tomorrow and let's hope we can get this bad boy cooked all the way through. He is too big for the oven bags, we will have to squeeze his fat little body into our roasting pan too and I think he barely fits in the oven. It will be a Thanksgiving to remember - let's hope for good reasons. We do have a meat thermomether so I don't think we'll give anyone food poisoning we just might not be able to eat until 10 pm.

Pics

Family Picture

My very talented sister-in-law took our family picture last Sunday. Around the corner from our house is a park and behind the baseball diamonds and the playground are some horse trails. That's where we are.

Pill Popper

Leah used to be a little angel when it came to letting me brush her teeth. Now . . . I have to wrestle her to the bathroom floor. Because we have well water with no flouride I recently started giving her some flouride pills. She LOVES them!! She will not go to bed without taking her "medicine." One night around Halloween, when I felt it especially important to make sure she brushed her teeth after all the candy, I heard myself say, "Leah hold still! Do you want to take your flouride? Hold still and let me brush your teeth or you won't get to take your flouride."
Who bribes their children with flouride pills? And the logic is kind of dumb that if she won't let me get the candy off her teeth she can't take flouride which will strengthen her teeth. Oh well, luckily, she isn't old enough to see the holes in my logic.

What's This?

According to Leah this is Daddy's make-up. I tell her it's deoderant, but she insists it is Daddy's make-up.

Garage Sales

I confess I like garage sales - especially for toys. Here are some of our latest finds. We have a My Little Pony castle for Leah - the girl told me they paid over $100 and we got it for $5 plus a bunch of ponies.

The exersaucer is a little bit big for Oliver . . and I'll be on the lookout for a better one since this one uh . . . doesn't really seem to have the "saucer" part and one of the main toys is missing. I sent Levin to look at this since I'd seen it from the road when I didn't have time to stop on the way to Oliver's. It was only $5 so he got it.

In the background of the picture of Oliver you can see another toy we got in the spring. I have scored good clothes for Oliver, some dresses for Leah and an awesome pair of shoes for her. Unfortunately, we lost one of Leah's shoes so that awesome deal didn't last long. The best money saver that we actually needed, (we didn't really NEED the pony castle) was a really good, sturdy, warm, winter coat for Oliver next winter when we're in Moscow. I paid only $1.

Yea for garage sales! I'm just sad we seem to be busy too many Saturdays and I didn't get to go often enough. Oh yeah, did I mention I got Leah a tiny bike? I figure we can't get stuff like that in Moscow when she'll be old enough to ride it. Or maybe I just can't pass up a good deal.

Trunk or Treat Pt. 2

You can see our little Oliver in the back row, being held by one of the older girls. He's the tiger. :)

Trunk or Treat

We had a little drama about what we would do for Halloween. I'll spare the details. In the end we took Leah and Oliver to their cousins' elementary school party on Friday night, then I took Leah to the library story time/trick or treat and Saturday night we had an impromptu ward trunk or treat. It was small, but fun. We didn't have a single trick or treater on Sunday so we had way too much candy for ourselves!