"Deck the Halls..."

This is another Rocket Scientist catch-up post

The day after Thanksgiving.

We can officially start decorating for Christmas.
Yeah. I'm excited too.
Or in the throes of a pancreas rattling cough.
That's ok, the kids are still happy to put up ornaments.
Or wear them.
Last year most of the ornaments ended up on the same two branches at the bottom of the tree.
They got spread out a little better this year.
Grandma came out to give us a hand.
I don't think I stopped coughing long enough to get off the couch.
Decorating is thirsty work.
Cute Girl figures out what stockings are for.
And they're both really happy about it.

Now we have somewhere to put all my presents.

Handsome Face

In the middle of November the young women had an activity to learn how to make pie crust. The Rocket Scientist was going to teach them to make the crust but there wasn't going to be enough time to bake the pie too so we baked a pumpkin pie the day before. Handsome Face was really excited about the pie. He helped mommy mix up the filling and stood guard over it while it baked.

This is a pretty standard pose around here. I don't think we've had an alien infestation yet but you can rest assured that if we do, Handsome Face will take care of it with his astro-blaster in short order.

Thanksgiving

This is the Rocket Scientist cleaning off the camera and catching up the blog while the wife rests.

We hung around at home and had a pretty low-key Thanksgiving. It was so low-key that one of the highlights was getting a crazy good deal on the turkey (29 cents a pound!) My brother-in-law brought his girlfriend down from Utah for the occasion. We made a bunch of gyoza on the Wednesday night before that was super good. We fried up one batch and still wanted more so we fried a second batch out of the extras we'd stuck in the freezer. That still leaves us with enough to have for dinner tonight.

I have an unfortunate tradition of injuring myself during Thanksgiving; it is usually incurred playing football but last year it was a freak accident where a flake of metal from my belt buckle got shoved through my thumbnail. This generally leaves me incapacitated and incapable of providing any real assistance cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children. Pretty much the only thing I can do in my disabled state is play video games and watch football; it's an excruciating ordeal but I usually recover despite the dirty looks the wife gives me. This year, as the wife was 8 3/4 months pregnant, and we were all alone hosting and cooking the dinner, I was forbidden to hurt myself and so declined the traditional turkey bowl. I stayed healthy. but failed in the job of taking pictures because this is all we got of the meal.

I did still manage to get some pictures of the pies.

Including my apple pie in which, as per tradition, I carved an un-boring steam vent.

I didn't bother taking a picture of the wife doing dishes as that would just be boring. Much more interesting is what the rest of us were doing:

Talking on the phone...

...and watching funny youTube videos.

She's Here!

And getting more love than she can handle.