Thanksgiving Weekend/サンクスギビングの週末

So we must begin with a confession...maybe we can blame it on having our first place for the first time, or the stretch of cooler weather last week (mid-60s :-), but we caught the Holiday bug early this year...the weekend before Thanksgiving we (or should I say I) set-up our fake Christmas Tree in the living room, blasted the Holiday music thanks to the I Heart Radio App and Madison enjoyed decorating it.

今年私達は今まで一度もした事の無い事をしてしまいました...サンクスギビングの前にクリスマスの飾り付けを始めてしまいました！先週ちょっと寒くなったせいか、この家で初めて過ごすクリスマスのせいかサンクスギビングの前に週末に早速クリスマスツリー１本目をマディソンと飾り付けです。

And I enjoyed re-decorating, as Madison clustered all hers in one area...rookie mistake!!
そして、僕はマディソンが全部同じ枝に飾り付けしたオーナメントを他の所に付け直しました！

The finished product...
出来上がり...

Oh yeah...we also made Ellie get into the Holiday Spirit early as well...
エリーもちゃっかりクリスマス気分...

 The first week of December, or so, we will get our real tree for the bay window in the kitchen...but only Mommy gets to decorate that one :-)
１２月の最初の週末に切り立てのクリスマスツリーを買って来て、台所にある大きな出窓にとっても綺麗なクリスマスツリー２本目を飾る予定です。(でも飾り付けするのはアンナだけらしい：）

Now to Thanksgiving Weekend...

それではサンクスギビング週末の出来事を話しましょう...

Thursday

木曜日

Our first official turkey packed with butter and ready for the oven...

僕達が初めて挑戦した七面鳥はバターたっぷりでオーブンへ...

But you can't forget the fresh herbs...I read on howtocookathanksgivingturkey.com that you should do 475 degrees for 20 minutes and then lower to 250 for 20 minutes per pound...since ours was a 12 pounder that meant waiting a grueling four hours...
その前に、マディソン園で栽培しているハーブを七面鳥の中に入れて、４時間もおいしく焼けてくれるのを願いながら待ちます...

 

 Madison passed the time by painting...
マディソンは絵の具で名作品を塗り中です...

 And four and a half hours later we had this...
約４時間半後、焼き上がり...

Madison was excited...
こんがり焼けた七面鳥と一緒にパシャ！

Our Thanksgiving spread...not bad for just the three of us...decorations were compliments of Madison
サンクスギビングの料理の出来上がりです...壁に飾ってあるのはマディソンが学校で作った帽子と飾り：）

Funny story...we had read in everything to make sure and remove the giblets before cooking...we searched and searched the butt for the giblets and decided because this was a frozen, pre-brined turkey from Trader Joes, they must have removed the giblets for us...so we cooked it and then when Anna was carving the leftovers, we found the plastic bag in the front of the turkey...is that normal? We don't know...

こっちで鳥を丸ごと料理する時には中に入っている肝臓などが入った袋を取り出さないといけないんだけど、それを見つけられないままあれー入ってないじゃんとそのまま調理。ご飯の片付けをしている時に、取り抜くはずだった袋を発見！やっぱり、入ってたんだー、ハハ！

After Thanksgiving, of course we head straight for decorating the outside of the house!!
サンクスギビングの食事の後、早速家の外の飾り付けを開始です!!

 My first trip to the roof...it is quite slanted...
初めて屋根の上に上りました...

 And my first trip in the tree...pretty easy to climb...
そして、初めてこの松の木に登りました...

We had seen this ornament look on other houses previously and always knew if we had a tree that worked we would go for it...well it definitely works...
どこかで見て気に入った木の飾り付けに挑戦しました...　成功です！


Anna also hot glued ornaments to some garland we got last year on sale...it turned out great...
アンナがオーナメントをくっ付けたガーランドも綺麗に出来上がり...


Our one new purchase for this year's display were these Santa Boots...

The finished display...

Friday

We fit in some Black Friday shopping at 8am and did okay...I actually tried to go at 10pm, but Wal-Mart was ridiculous, so I turned around...then I woke up at 1:30am and thought Target might be fun, but when I went to leave the fog was so thick you couldn't see an inch in front of you so I went back to bed...after shopping we hit Disneyland since we were in the area...it was crowded, but we rode the Monorail in and went to the Holiday area with the crafts, reindeer games and character greetings and it wasn't busy at all...Madison got to make her mask and even dance with Minnie Mouse...

 

Madison playing her Reindeer Games...

Saturday

Off to feed the ducks... We kept needing to postpone the trip due to our busy schedules and weather so we had filled up 3 bags with bread scraps and ends by then...:-)

 

And that's our Thanksgiving Weekend...hope you and your family had a blessed one as well!!

Anna's Birthday Weekend

On November 2nd, Madison and I treated Anna to some Thai take-out, a fire in the fireplace and a private viewing of Madagascar 3...as if that wasn't enough we followed it up with her favorite kind of cake...a strawberry layer cake from Ralph's Bakery. 

 Anna treated herself to the G-Shock Watch she had had her eye thanks in large part to the birthday money from Gma and Gpa Klein.

Anna's Official Birthday Weekend was postponed a week due to her helping to host a baby shower for our good friend Grace of Chris and Grace...so this past weekend we set out for a fun-filled adventure in Palm Springs.

About an hour and a half into your journey to Palm Springs there is a large outlet mall so we made our first planned stop there, but Anna didn't have much luck so after browsing Diesel and Saks Off 5th Ave, we hopped back in the car for the half-hour journey to downtown Palm Springs where we planned to eat lunch.

Never having been to Palm Springs we relied on Yelp to find us a good place to eat...and did it ever. It was this little sandwich shop that we almost wimped out on when we didn't see anyone eating there, but we mustered up the courage and Madison and I enjoyed one of the best meatball subs I have ever had...and Anna liked her thing as well...then we walked the strip a little more, but knew we needed to be back to the car in two hours as the little golf cart cop had chalked our car as soon as we pulled in so we knew the clock was ticking :-)

We made it far enough down the strip to see this as we chomped on some ice cream...then we headed back to the car...still not sure why the giant statue of Marilyn Monroe was there...but pretty cool.

Then it was onto our hotel, about 12 miles away in Palm Desert. It was cool to remember you were driving through a desert as when you took away the buildings you could imagine just sand and shrubbery...and tall mountains. From downtown to the hotel we decided to take the back road(highway111) so we could go through a few towns on the way and see interesting stores like a huge estate sale store that consisted of 3 huge buildings. Each item had the name of the owner and the date it started selling in the store and price... kind of pricey, Anna was looking for vintage looking picture frames but none were cheap enough to spray paint and experiment with.

Our hotel room was spectacular. I had used some of our Hilton Honors Points to get us a room at the Homewood Suites...it had a fully stocked kitchen with pots and pans, living room and 1 bedroom with two queen beds. The bathroom was also huge...the only bummer was no bathtub...the room was built for handicapped individuals and due to the bike race adjacent from the hotel every other room was sold out...but we still liked it...

Just a few miles from our hotel was another famous shopping district called El Paseo...advertised as the Rodeo Drive of Palm Springs...Anna used some birthday money for a pair of pants at Juicy Couture and some make-up supplies at Sephora...it was a perfect night to be browsing the strip with temps in the low 60s letting you know it was fall in the Desert. 

Sunday Morning, we found a nice congregation in Palm Desert to worship with and then headed to the Children's Museum of the Desert for some playtime for Madison...

 She wasted no time jumping into the little ropes course and making up her own game...

 
It looks like she is in some kind of mission impossible type movie..:-)

She did some art...

 Went shopping...

 

Anna loved this cute store so much that she wants to recreate a much smaller version of it in our house... She is adding a shopping cart to her wishlist book for g-pa&g-ma Klein as I type this... What was really cool was that a lot of items were real products you can buy from a grocery store minus the inside contents so it's not that expensive to create, you just have to save the packaging of your normal grocery items...

  

Played the Harp...

Did a matching game where I called out what to do with each shape and then Madison followed the instruction, you can see there is a wall between Madison and me so Madison did not see what I was doing the whole time except to follow my lead...

This one is my finished product...

 And this was Madison's...so close...she just didn't understand what I meant by "next to..." as in "put the yellow rectangle next to the red square...

If we haven't said so, Madison loves this Blue Motorcycle our neighbor a few doors down parks outside...she even goes and pets it occasionally...she of course she was excited to hop on this guy...

 Not ready for this...

 They also had a nice space outside to play games...

Inside there was a Volkswagon Beetle that allowed children's creativity to run wild...

 And perhaps we have another engineer in the family...Madison loved building these ramps for the golf ball to go down...

 

And helping Mommy build this roller coaster for the golf ball (Daddy was not much help)...

Madison also got to practice her pizza making skills (this one I could do:-)...

 

Madison also enjoyed learning how a pulley works...

 And Gravity...

Then there was this secret box thing where you stuck your hand in and tried to guess the tool...there was some dangerous ones like a hammer and screwdriver...

 

Madison is shaking her head at me as I was the last one to be ready to go... I got into playing this Simon says game...:-) It was fun.

And no trip to a Children's Museum would be complete without a few tears...these were caused by trying to squeeze through a spot that was a little too tight...but they didn't last very long...

 

 Especially when we hit Cheesecake Factory on the way home :-)

All in all Palm Springs is a lovely place to take a day trip to if you have the time...it's a pretty drive and when you reach the mountain pass the mountains are littered with wind turbines which is pretty cool, but there is really only expensive shopping, a children's museum or gated communities with country club after country club...it really did feel more like a playground for the wealthy and retired...and we are certainly neither at this stage in our lives :-) But for a weekend getaway it definitely fit the bill and we probably will go back when we can take the tram to the top of the San Jacinto Mountains and play in the snow :-)