Turkeys and Pumpkin Pies

Thank God it's Tuesday/Friday!! The past week and weekend have been extremely long and I'm glad today's the last day of school for this week. I left last Thursday morning for the Missouri International Reading Conference at The Lodge of the Four Seasons at the Lake of the Ozarks. While this is always a good conference and I learn so much when I attend, the pace of the workshops leaves very little down time and I'm always exhausted when I get home on late Saturday evening. On the plus side, I was able to meet the authors Patricia McKissack and Marc Brown, so my niece and nephew are receiving signed copies of Flossie and the Fox as well as Arthur's New Puppy, Arthur's Chicken Pox, and Wild About Books. The authors were great. Patricia McKissack did a dramatic reading of part of Flossie and the Fox while Marc Brown talked about traveling on Air Force One with the First Lady to attend the first Russian Children's Book Festival. Apparently there is a separate compartment on Air Force One where she can go in to smoke, even though no one else is allowed to smoke on the airplane. Isn't it interesting that the rich and famous do not have to follow the same rules as everyone else - like there's a big shock! Also, the choice of food on Air Force One, according to Mr. Brown, appears to be Dove Bars, since that was in big bold letters at the bottom of the menu for the plane. There is some random trivia for you, whether you needed it or not.

Tonight, I will be baking pumpkin pies. I have finally convinced my mom that one of us needs to bake the pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving and Christmas. For several years, my mom told my cousin Donna (who has two masters degrees, yet can't seem to hold down a job and has a tendancy to walk into walls in my parents' house that have been there for 30 years while exclaiming that she didn't know that wall was there- go figure) that, "Of course, you can bake the pumpkin pies!" She has difficulty seeing, but apparently, she mixed up the sugar with the salt. As a result, we routinely had two beautiful pumpkin pies sitting on the counter and when my sister, brother, and I would cut into them and load them up with half a can of RediWhip (honestly, is there any other way to eat pumpkin pie), we'd take our first bite and promptly spit the pie out in unison. For about 3 years, we were jipped out of pumpkin pie. It got to be a joke, so much so that Sebrina's mom once fixed us a contraband pumpkin pie that we sneaked into Roy's house so we could eat good pie! According to my mom's decree, one of us now has to make the pie since we didn't appreciate Donna's efforts. It's not that we didn't appreciate the effort, it's just that we all really like pumpkin pie.

Tomorrow night, I will be heading home to help Mom shoot up and rub down birds so my dad can fry turkeys like a crazy man all Thursday morning. I'll try to remember to bring home the digital camera so you can see the carnage that my mother's kitchen becomes on Wednesday night. There are so many turkeys in the house that night that we could make the German family version of that Peter Gabriel video with the dancing chickens! Oh well, fried bird is excellent.

In any case, I hope you all enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday, even all of the crazy preparation that goes along with the feast!