The Week Of Thanksgiving

++Updated to fix the picture links, thanks!++

The weather man warned us that we may get some snow...maaaaaybe an inch, he said. Hi there, 4 inches later, our half of the state is SHUT DOWN. Outsiders may laugh, but we have nasty hills, no one even knows how to use chains, we don't have enough snow plows or sand trucks, and our snow is...ahem...slicker n' snot. It's true. It took my husband 3 hours to get home from downtown yesterday- when he called to tell me he was OK, he was STOPPED on the freeway and watching cars slide. Stopped cars.

The girls had fun making snow angels... mostly. (See those scrunched up eyes??)

 ...sort of. Mimi didn't think it was funny at all to be in snow up to her shins, but she (for some reason) despises her boots. I figured 15 seconds of standing in the snow in sneakers wouldn't hurt her!

This is what our yard looks like this afternoon- all that wonderful sunshine is making indoors look nice and cozy indeed, especially since I know that it's about 23 degrees outside!

Ernie is industriously working on her Christmas friends for "kids that she loves." (I think that's code for cousins...) She's making these, and we're not telling the kids that there are toys inside! Toy dinosaurs, actually. She picked them out herself- when I suggested bouncy balls, she cocked her head and thoughtfully said "Nooo....Ming Wai already HAS a bouncy ball!" Alrighty then. One word of caution, though- she grated up the soap yesterday, and that was all good, and made two snowballs out of this first bar, but by the end of the second snow ball she was starting to get a little teary-eyed, because her hands itched SOOOO much! Dry weather is dry skin, and soap itches! (Yes, I finished up this ball for her!)

We've been enjoying being cozied up in the house, but I think the kids are starting to get a bit stir crazy. A friend brought over a bag FULL of Korean goodies yesterday from her freezer, and we've been keeping our bellies toasty drinking cinnamon juice over ice, mixed with milk to calm down the spice a bit. I'm not sure what she put in there, but when she warned us that even Koreans only drink demitasse cups at a time, she wasn't kidding! Mimi is a champ, and drinks it straight up. When I tried that last night, I very nearly went into labor...definitely something to remember for a few months from now! So yeah, drink it over ice...with half milk, half cinnamon juice. Scrummy!

She also brought a bag full of frozen kimchi, which is DIVINE. Fishy, spicy, and delicious! She knew I've been craving kimchi fiercely for months, but I'm disappointed whenever I purchase it, and couldn't face making an entire batch just for myself and my sister, since I don't know anyone else who would eat it!

I'm making my final list of pies for Thanksgiving, here's what's on the docket:

Brown-Eyed Baker's Dutch Apple Pie
Sunset's Pumpkin Pie
Taste of Home's Pineapple Meringue Pie (I've made this for years, it's delicious and totally unexpected!)
Peach-A-Berry Pie, from All Recipes (I have frozen peaches from this summer, and frozen raspberries from the garden)
Lemon Chess Pie, from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook! blog

My only issues...I'm short ONE EGG for this list, and I only have two nice pie pans- all my remaining pans are depressingly shallow, tin affairs left over from frozen pies. My sister has 3 pie pans for me to borrow...but her house is halfway up a small mountain (true story) and the roads are nothing but ice. The peach pie could easily become a gallette, and I think the pineapple meringue and dutch apple will just need to be cooked in square bakers. Yeah? Yeah. I'm just grateful the weather should warm up by Thursday afternoon, so we can have a family dinner! (Oh, I'm in charge of green bean casserole, too, but I'm going to make a sauce based on this recipe I came up with a few weeks ago, easy peasy!)