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Oh Stuff It!

Thanksgiving: the great day of stuffing. Thanksgiving for most people means eating until you’re relatively certain that consumption of even one more bite will result in a massive vomitous explosion. When I was a kid I definitely gorged myself on Turkey Day but I have since outgrown my desire to ingest painfully large quantities of food. Thanksgiving has therefore become a holiday of food quality not quantity for me. Everything I make for our crazy array of family dinners has to be homemade and delicious; I usually bring out my most decadent and elaborate recipes for this holiday.

This is the cluster of family members that
This is the cluster of family members that was still at my parent's house when I realized I hadn't taken any pictures yet.

With two families to visit, Thanksgiving, like Christmas, is typically very hectic for me and Jason and generally leaves us completely exhausted. So this year, in addition to the pumpkin cheesecake and assorted tidbits I made for our family dinners, I decided to cook me and Jason pre and post Thanksgiving meals on Wednesday and Friday. I thought it would be nice to make some tasty food on days we could actually relax a bit and enjoy it.

Phyllo Wrapped Asparagus
Phyllo Wrapped Asparagus

I made Butternut Squash Soup, Phyllo Wrapped Asparagus, and Bruschetta with Sautéed Sweet Peppers and Creamy Gorgonzola for our pre-feasting feast and an absolutely scrumptious, and time consuming, Beef Bourguignon recipe for our post-holiday stuffing. Yum!

This delicious Beef Bourguignon took 3 hours and whole bottle of red wine to make.
This delicious Beef Bourguignon took 3 hours and an entire bottle of red wine to make. It was worth it!

Spreading out our holiday food intake turned out to be pretty perfect for me since I don’t really care for the normal Thanksgiving porking. Jason made no complaints about this 3 day food fiesta but maybe that’s because his mouth was too crammed to utter a syllable. Either way, I think I have stumbled upon a lovely new Thanksgiving tradition that I am going to continue in the years to come.

Rachel December 8, 2009 No Comments

Freaky Festivities

Every year we undertake a maddening endeavor: a Halloween party of such magnitude that only those with questionable sanity would attempt it. Okay, maybe it’s not quite elaborate enough to be a product of lunacy, but it’s a ridiculous amount of work: sewing costumes, decorating every possible surface of two floors of our house, buying and wrapping prizes, organizing games and contests. Preparations start months in advance and cleanup takes weeks if we are diligent and months if we are not. If you can’t imagine how putting on such an event would take so much time it’s because you have never tried it.

This graveyard, made up of the basement boxes that
Jason converted the boxes in our basement to this graveyard. I had my doubts about how it would turn out but I was pleased with the results.
I dressed-up this year as Aphrodite; Jason went as Ares the god of war.
I dressed-up this year as the Greek goddess Aphrodite; Jason went as Ares, the god of war. As usual, I sewed both our costumes.
Here's my
Here are my goddess locks. Not too shabby considering I did the “do” myself.
Lee as a Chinese organ thief
Lee as a Chinese organ thief.
This is my friend Robyn, I mean Leia, and her kiddies. Robyn won the best costume prize this year.
This is my friend Robyn, I mean Leia, and her kiddies. Robyn won the best costume prize this year.
These decorations weren't too impressive but I liked how this picture turned out.
These decorations aren’t too impressive but I like how this picture turned out.
Jason and Drew A.K.A. Ares and Mark Antony
Jason and Drew A.K.A. Ares and Mark Antony. And yes, Jason does have a giant helmet.

Decorating for this party is the most time-consuming task. Our Halloween decorations fill over 20 giant Rubbermaid containers. Just locating and organizing the items we want to use is quite an ordeal. But the hardest part of decorating is trying to arrange the same decorations into something different every year. Coming up with good décor ideas for each area in our house is hard; coming up with distinct good ideas every year is nearly impossible.

This little mouse in a teacup was my
This little mouse, peaking out of a teacup, is my most favorite of the decoration ideas I came up with this year. For some reason I really dig it.
Jason's
Jason’s parents, Keith and Sue, dressed in 50’s attire. The stitches on Sue’s nose are not part of her costume. She fell a couple of days before our party and broke her nose in two places.
This is our fireplace transformed.
This is our fireplace transformed.
Jenn as Alice and Strider the Mad Hatter. Jenn made these fabulous costumes.
Jenn as Alice and Strider the Mad Hatter. Jenn made these fabulous costumes.
Jason's
Jason’s brother Jeremy and our friend Jacob shared a sweet moment in Jeremy’s creamed crap can together. You’d think this special moment was the result of some punch spiking but that was not the case.
My brother, Drew, came as Mark Antony and his wife, Simone, came as his lover Cleopatra.
My brother Drew came as Mark Antony and his wife, Simone, came as Cleopatra, Antony’s lover.
I created this pirate's lair to hide some basement boxes.
I created this pirate’s lair to hide some basement boxes.

We love Halloween, which is why we take on this arduous chore year after year. All the work is worth it (in theory) when our friends and family show up decked-out in their costume inventions ready for some fiendish merriment. I especially enjoy watching the little kids, at least the ones that aren’t absolutely horrified by the Halloween paraphernalia, go from decoration to decoration muttering “wow” and “look at this one”. We’re glad to be part of the magic of Halloween even if it’s a lot of hard work, not magic, that makes it happen.

This is my nephew Miles with lot so loot from the pinata and the treasure hunt.
This is my nephew Miles with lots of loot from the pinata and treasure hunt.
These are the costume contest winners...and Jacob.
These are the costume contest winners…and Jacob.
I did a pirate treasure hunt for the kids this year. This was the pirate booty.
I did a pirate treasure hunt for the kids this year. This was the pirate booty.
Here are my parents in their Halloween attire.
Here are my parents in their Halloween attire.
Jason and his brother Matt goofing off.
Jason and his brother Matt goofing off.
Jason did a great job on this ceiling. He hooked up all the lighting to a colorbox, which made all the lights flicker to our Halloween music.
Jason did a great job on this ceiling. He hooked up all the lighting to a color box, which made the lights flicker to our Halloween music.
This is yet another of the many areas we decorated for the party.
This is yet another of the many areas we decorated for the party.
Rachel October 26, 2009 No Comments

The Geek Streak

I just hit another huge milestone in the life of my ankle. It has now been a year since my surgery and I celebrated properly by running in a relay marathon race. After I hurt my ankle over eight years ago I wasn’t able to run for more than about 25 minutes at a time; the pain would become too overwhelming. I love to run so that was a hard reality for me to accept. That’s why I was very excited to pick up running again, now that my tendon repair surgery has hopefully corrected the longstanding issues with my ankle.

The Geek Streak
The Geek Streak
I love this action shot even though it turned out a bit blurry. baton
I love this action shot even though it turned out a bit blurry. It was taken at the exact moment I handed off our team baton to Jeremy.

Originally I had wanted to run in the Red Rock Relay at the end of this summer but, since I couldn’t find enough willing participants for this 2 day running madness, I settled for getting a team together to run the Utah Marathon Relay. In this relay race each team, consisting of 5 members, runs the equivalent of a marathon. This means each runner is responsible for a 5.2 mile stretch.

It
Since these are the Sabin brothers, don't ask.

Jason and I started training for this event back in June. While 5.2 miles really isn’t an incredibly impressive distance, it’s longer than my ankle has allowed me to run in nearly a decade so I wanted to ease into it. I am extremely pleased with how my ankle handled training and the race. I generally experienced no pain during my training runs. Each time I increased the length of my run my ankle would be a little stiff and sore for a day or two, but nothing I couldn’t handle. This stiffness was such a mild inconvenience compared to the pain I had become used to over the years that I barely even noticed it.

This is Fran right after the 4 mile marker. She did her run in an awesome 47 minutes and 37 seconds.
This is Fran right after her 4th mile marker. She did her run in an awesome 47 minutes and 37 seconds. Way to go!

My relay team, the Geek Streak, was comprised of me, Jason, his brother Jeremy, my brother Drew, and my friend Fran. We ran the marathon in 4 hours, 13 minutes, and 13 seconds. Yeah us! I made a goal for myself of running each mile in ten minutes or less and I met that goal exactly on race day with a 52 minute run. Jason’s brother, Jeremy, had never really run ever before he started training for this race. He trained regularly though and did a fantastic job on race day with a run time of 52 minutes and 3 seconds. I’m really proud of his perseverance! My brother Drew, unlike Jeremy, didn’t think training for this race was necessary. So we weren’t too shocked when he seemed a lot more fatigued than the rest of us after his run. His exhaustion must have made him delirious because he went the wrong way twice during his leg, but he did eventually find the finish line. Congratulations Drew on finishing even though you are apparently completely out of shape! (Little brothers need to be given a hard time. It reminds them that they are loved…and that they should run more than a few times when training for a race.)

This is what my brother Drew did after he ran his portion of the race.
After my brother ran his section of the race he crashed on the grass. I thought I might have to resuscitate him.

The race was a great experience! I’m so glad I now have two ankles strong enough for running! I look forward to my next race and my next milestone.

This is Jason in his final sprint for the finish line. He was the fastest runner on our team even though
This is Jason in his final sprint for the finish line. He was the fastest runner on our team even though he got the last, and hottest, leg of the race.
Rachel September 14, 2009 5 Comments
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