December 7, 2011 - Catching Up Part 5 - Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Things moved rapidly toward Blaine and Jill adopting the little  boy they had found this week.  By Friday morning,  November 18th, Jill was on a plane to Hawaii to pick him up.  The whole family was so excited.  I was just sad that I couldn't be in Idaho with them as they waited for this little boy to get there.

The weekend of November 19th and 20th was just plain cold outside.  It had hardly warmed  up to anything higher than 35 below 0 for more than a week.  JW had been working very long hours so we kind of just spent the weekend vegging.  I tried to think of what we were going to have for Thanksgiving dinner.  I had searched every store and no one had king crab.  All they had was some little snow crabs.  I got on line and looked at ordering some but it was $46 a pound plus over night delivery charges - yikes.

I worked on November 21st and then when I got off work, I headed to town to do my grocery shopping for the week.  Monday's seem to work out best for my shopping.  I drove to the west side Fred Meyers since we had found on Saturday that they haven't finished inside construction on the east side store and it is hard to find anything in there.

It was cold when I left home so I went into the girl's bedroom to take a picture of the window.  This is a 5 star rated home as far as energy efficiency goes and the windows have triple paned glass.  But you will notice that this window on the north side of the house has frost on the inside.  I cannot imagine how bad it would be if the windows were only single paned.

Once I got into town, I saw that there was a lot of ice fog.  As I got near Sportsman's Warehouse, I just had to pull into the parking lot  to take some pictures.

This area has the newest shopping for Fairbanks.  It has all the stores you would  see in the lower 48. Besides Sportsman's, there is Old Navy, Barnes and Noble, Sports Authority, Famous Shoes, Lowes, Walmart and what every town that has a lot of dogs in, PetCo.

From where I was parked, you can barely make out Birch Hill  behind the bus on Johanssen Expy.  The ice fog is caused by the low temperatures, the inversion and also because people will leave their vehicles running while they run into the store for a few minutes or if they've been in the store quite a while, they will use auto-start to get it warmed up while they are checking out.

I left this area and drove around behind Lowe's into the next shopping area to Fred Meyers to do my grocery shopping for Thanksgiving dinner.  I still hadn't decided what to cook and had no desire at all to do the full turkey meal.  The parking lot was full and I had to park out in the south 40.  Most of the cars in the parking lot were running with no one in them.

It was Monday so I figured the store wouldn't be too terribly busy.  Boy was I wrong, the place was packed.  I headed straight for the meat counter to see if by chance they would magically have obtained some King Crab.

And I was not disappointed.  $19.99 a pound which was about 60% less than Sisters of Alaska was selling them.  They had some in the seafood case and when I told the butcher, I wanted 6 nice legs, he went into the back to get me some that were still frozen.  The size was 9/12 which means 9-12 oz. per leg.  I knew I wouldn't need 6 but figured we could have them for more than 1 meal.

Besides,  if I spent more than $150 on groceries that day, I could get a free turkey to sock away in the freezer for another day.  I also picked up some shrimp and veggies.  I now had crab but had no idea what I was going to serve with it.  The check out lines were long and I chatted with a few people while we waited our turn.  One old guy in line had his "turkey" dinner.  He had a whole package of turkey gizzards and the price was only $4.38.  I love gizzards and buy chicken gizzards one in a while to fry up but had never seen a pkg of turkey gizzards.  He said they were his and his brother's favorite part of the turkey so who needed a whole bird.

I was in Freddy's for 1 hour and when I came out at 5:02, it was pretty dark.  But Birch Hill that had been covered by fog when I went in was now more visible.

I drove on home and threw together a quick dinner.

November 22 was our 42nd anniversary.  That morning, I received a call from Jill saying Blaine had picked her and our new Grandson at Salt Lake airport and they were heading home.  It was very special to me that he arrived in the continental US on our anniversary.

We just cooked up a regular dinner and didn't do anything to celebrate as we were both just worn out from long hours and not enough sleep.

November 23rd, I had plans to pick up MP for our weekly BBBS outing but she called me and said she  needed to do something else.  That was fine as I really needed to stay home and make a pecan pie for JW anyway.

I took a short break for lunch and just couldn't stand it any longer that I had a new Grandson I hadn't met yet.  I called JW and said "Can we go to Idaho for Christmas?"  Of course, he said "we can probably do that."  So I immediately bought tickets before the planes were all filled up.  I figured I could cancel them within the 24 hour time limit if he came home with a change of heart.

 I got out of work an hour early but was dumb enough to tell people that if they ran into any problems to give me a call since I was going to just be home anyway.  Not sure why I feel guilty when I get out of work early - especially when some of my co-workers got out 3 hours early and I only got out one.  Unfortunately, I got 4 calls for HELP!!!

I did get my pecan pie made and also made these little pumpkin pecan pies that I had seen made on TV.  They looked good but they were pretty bad so they all went straight into the garbage can.  While I was baking, I decided to go ahead and bake a pineapple pie for New Years so that would be done.  Pineapple is a symbol of warm welcome so I figure it is a good welcome to a new year.  I definitely have plenty of room in the freezer.

November 24th, Thanksgiving Day.  JW got up at the normal time as he had to go to work.  He was planning on being home by lunch time.  I made a shrimp  cocktail sauce and cut up some veggies then just watched Christmas movies until he came home.  We just had shrimp and veggies for lunch.  Then about 4:30, I threw together a Cheesy Broccoli Mushroom Rice Casserole  that I had seen made on TV .  I had thawed out three crab legs and about 15 minutes before the rice was done, I threw it into the steaming pot to "cook".  Course you don't really cook crab as it is pre-cooked and flash frozen after they are caught.

It was delicious and the best part was that we didn't over eat and feel stuffed when we finished.

November 25th - Black Friday.  JW had to go to work again.  I straightened up the house a bit and messed around the house and started pulling out Christmas decorations.  About 11:30 when I decided I was going to brave the crowds for long enough to go to Hallmark and get Christmas Ornaments for the grandkids.  I had also saw that Hallmark had a fairly simple glass star for sale and I was hoping they had one left.  I had been looking for a plain star for my tree for years.  But while almost everyone makes angels to top a tree there just aren't a lot of stars out there.

On the way to town, I decided I was going to try to do 25 days of Christmas for Mom again this year since she seemed to enjoy it last year and it gave her just a little something to look forward to each day.  I found a few little things at Hallmark and felt like kicking myself for not thinking about doing through the year so I could keep my eyes open for little things that I could relate to some memory in my life.

Of course, I spent way too much money at Hallmark which is easy to do when you are using plastic and aren't looking at prices.

I headed back toward home and as I drove by Pioneer Park (aka Alaskaland), I noticed there were a few cars there and that there were lights shining in the historical town.  It consists of old buildings and homes that were moved there from various locations around Fairbanks.

 I decided it would be cool to walk around in the park while the rest of the world was shopping.

40 Below - no need to go in there during the winter.

Not sure where the owner of this truck was as none of the buildings were open.  However they were getting ready for a Holiday special on Saturday.

All the horses have been removed from the carousel.

I only spent about 20 minutes walking around in the park but that was plenty for  as cold as it was.  I was not dressed properly to be out in 5 below temperatures.  At least my feet were warm and my head but I hadn't warn gloves and my face was freezing.

I headed for home but stopped for a minute near the Chena River.

Most of the river is frozen by now but in this particular area there is some geothermal activity that warms the water enough to keep it from freezing.  The unfortunate thing about this is that there are a few ducks that stay in this area cause they are plenty warm and are used to people feeding them in the summer.  So, they just hang around and try to make it through the winter.

November 26, JW and I went to town to look around a bit.  I needed to go to Jo-Ann's to get some red velvet to make a Christmas stocking for the new Grandson.  JW decided to stay in the truck as usual.  I thought I would only be a few minutes.  I  found the velvet and headed to the counter to get it cut.  They were using their number thing and when I pulled out my paper number it was 102.  The number showing on the now serving was 87 and one of the people they were cutting fabric for had a stack of at least 15 bolts of fabric.

Needless to say, I put the velvet back and decided I would come back on Monday when things were quieter.

JW and I went and bought some fruit and veggies.  We stopped at Gallos and had lunch then went on home to watch a movie on the tube.