A Day of Thanks a Weekend of Fun!

Turkey Day festivities began on Wednesday night with my debut performance as the "desert flower" in St. Matthew's Thanksgiving Eve Worship drama. I SEWED that cactus costume myself, and I don't sew, so as you can see, I was pretty proud. Jon recently took the time to be trained on the sound board church and did some research on his own to figure out the fancy light board that no one new how to work, and was able to help run the lighting for the play.

We have SO many thing to be thankful for this year, like our beautiful wedding and officially becoming husband and wife! One of the other things on the top of our list of thanks, is our kitten, Oscar Meyer. We adopted him from the Humane Society almost exactly one year ago, the day after Thanksgiving 2007. Jon absolutely adores the cat, but he swears it's only because he's really a puppy. I have to admit he does have quite a few dog like qualities, including letting us tie him to a post out in the backyard, coming when he's called, and always looking for a lap to cuddle on. We feel so blessed to have his affection and companionship.

We celebrated Thanksgiving Day with our dear Seattle friends Gretchen and Ryan. Maybe you heard her sing at our wedding in September! We stuffed and roasted a 21 pound turkey and provided the wine, and they brought tons of yummy side dishes and dessert.

There was so much food it barely all fit on the table! With only four for dinner, there were a lot of leftovers, but we like it that way! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, red cabbage, asparagus, crescent rolls, and cranberry salad, plus the best pumpkin pie I've ever tasted. It was exciting to use our beautiful new dishes, silverware, and table linens too. We spent the rest of the afternoon playing games, Catch Phrase and Cranium, and we watched the movie, Wal-E. It was such a tasty relaxing day with such wonderful friends. We definitely missed family, but if we couldn't be with you, this wasn't a bad way to go!

Jon and I rarely get two days off in a row, so we decided to take advantage of the time and made a short overnight trip to Yakima Valley, Washington. Our Mission: wine tasting! We got to drive east over the mountains, which I had never done since I flew to Washington when we moved, and it was neat to see the different landscape, very desert, desolate, and bare compared to the lush coast. We visited ten different tasting rooms in two days, turned our teeth purple, and purchased 11 bottles of wine to bring back. Success!

Above you can see "Wine Glass Cellars", one of our favorite stops last weekend. The tasting rooms are either literally in barns or strip malls in Yakima. The wine industry is really starting to tap into the tourist industry in Washington, but you can see compared to what we saw in Napa on our honeymoon they still have a ways to go to catch up.

Here I am in front of the fancy buildings, fountains, and gorgeous vineyards of Robert Mondavi Vineyards in California. Look at his barrel cellar where he insists everything is lined to perfection creating a beautiful and impressive photo opportunity for guests!

Wait...there's even more! Our weekend fun wasn't even over. We came home on Saturday night, and found enough energy to put of the Christmas tree. Hooray! It was work at church for me as usual on Sunday morning, and then our usual Sunday afternoon nap, and more work at the decorations. On Sunday Evening, we went to see a band in concert, Over The Rhine with Gretchen and Ryan, one of there favorites. The show was great and the venue was fantastic! The Triple Door had dinner theatre style seating and we dined on yummy Asian fusion food. I think we'll be back someday!

Phew! We did make it to Monday, and it was back to the grind. Definitely not fun to get out of bed and go to work after such a wonderful weekend!