Thanksgiving

Olivia:  The rich fellowship in the house, teamwork as we prepare an elaborate meal, and excellent conversation at the table make Thanksgiving with my family one of my favorite holidays.

Todd:  These are mostly pictures of the turkey, because I was very excited to make it with the Mark Bittman 45-minute turkey method.  It came extremely moist and tender, as promised.  No more dry poultry in our future.  Todd: 1, Conventional Wisdom: 0

The Big Two-Eight

Once again my family and friends did a wonderful job helping me celebrate my birthday. Highlights included a tasty Moroccan dinner, a lovely new scarf, a delicious root beer chocolate cake (home-made!), wings and beer (twice), and a gift certificate to my favorite place, a yarn store. Thanks to everyone who joined in - I had a fantastic birthday!

The Shuley Cup

Over the weekend Todd and his siblings all played in the 1st Annual Shuley Cup hockey tournament in Boston. If you know the Parkins you should know that they're into hockey. Urban legend has it that Scott was on skates before he could walk and all three of them have been known to cart around huge duffel bags of gear that reek as only hockey gear can reek. And they're so indoctrinated that they don't even notice anymore.

Todd has played hockey on and off the entire time that I've known him and I know that a good game of hockey, especially one he's actually played in, makes him very happy. Recently it's been harder for him to find opportunities to play, so when Melissa, who is the only one of the siblings to have played continuously from childhood to today, mentioned that her team might be short of players for a tournament in Atlantic City, Todd jumped at the chance to fill in. And that sort of rekindled a recent interest playing more, nicely coinciding with the 1st Annual Shuley Cup, organized by Melissa and her hockey cohorts. We ended up having to ask to deduct a vacation day off of next year to make it and it was totally worth it. I didn't even play and I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
It turned out to be a super exciting tournament. Todd and Melissa were on one team and Scott was on a different team, but they ended up being the two teams that made it to the finals. All of the games with the siblings were particularly exciting for me and all three of them played well. Todd and Scott both scored goals for their teams and they managed not to flatten each other or permanently damage anyone else.

Shuley did an excellent job or organizing the tournament, complete with tee shirts and a variety of awards. Todd's "Denny Mark Award" for 'clutch performance player' is now a stable of the dining room table. I will try to find a more appropriate place for it, but for now I can't deprive Todd of saying "Hi, Denny!" all the time and making his head bobble.

Halloween in Windsor

Todd's uncle's family threw their second annual Halloween party.  Last time it was a smashing success and this year it was too!  Todd's family are some of my favorite people so that made it especially fun.

The invite said to bring an hors d'ouvres or dessert so of course we opted for dessert.  We'd been dying to try to make Nigella Lawson's Guinness cake ever since Jess made a fantastic double decker Guinness cake during one of our trips to DC.  In the interest of time and portability we did cupcakes and they came out fantastic.  Todd's grandma very nicely invited us to stay overnight at her house and let us use her kitchen to make the cupcakes.

This is just a tiny, tiny sample of the fabulous decorations. I can't believe how much effort they put into it.  They decorate so that every time you look around you notice another more subtle addition.  I was really impressed.

What rock star-themed party would be complete without lots and lots of Guitar Hero and Rock Band?  I am happy to say that I think I only failed one song.  And we got to play the Beatles edition, which was interesting.  Sadly they had a wide variety of their songs, but not Rocky Raccoon (my favorite).

A lot of effort went into this appropriately themed costume make by Whitney's multi-talented friend who also performs Fire Poi.  He gave a performance at night in the dark and it was pretty awesome.

True to form the Guinness cake recipe made delicious moist cupcakes despite some dodgy timing on the baking.

The next morning Buddy took Dakota on a little tour of the grave yard before we loaded up the car with 200 pounds of kibble that Whitney did us an awesome favor to bring from NH.  Between loading up the kibble and pulling out of the driveway Todd's uncle did us another favor and buffed out the scratches on the back of the car.  It was amazing to watch and everyone - guys and girls - was transfixed while he did it.  I can't wait to see if they throw another party next year.  I think we'll have to be more creative with our costumes because the bar is pretty high.

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Bats!

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

Up above the world you fly,

Like a teatray in the sky.

Twinkle, twinkle little bat!

How I wonder what you're at!

- Mad Hatter during the mad tea-party, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

For Halloween last year I make pumpkins and the year before I made pumpkin baskets.  This year I moved away from the pumpkins and decided to make some adorable bats.  This was another fun pattern from Mochimochi Land.  The knitting part was pretty fast and easy, but then I had to sew the pieces together and that took forever.  After the first one I modified the pattern to pick up the stitches for the wings and ears and that made things a lot easier.  I was worried that the wings were too curly, but blocking fixed that right up.  All together I made three, but I didn't manage to get a short of them all together on the knitting needle.  Maybe I'll make some more next year...