Oh, Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving this year was great. I flew down to Miami (this was a double holiday for me, because my birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day this year) and had a great meal with my family. The Nielsons and the Nippers joined us, and we had a full house of good food and wonderful friends. We rounded out the evening by seeing Twilight again (thanks for the shirts Joan!) and then went back to Laura's to watch Persuasion (thank you, Captain Wentworth, for sharing the evening with us!).

On Friday Mom, Mari and I hit the stores and got some great deals. We are not those hardcore shoppers that wait outside at 4 am for the stores to open, but we had ideas of what we wanted and where to go. I think we did a good job. That evening, the Stouts went over to the Nielson home to share in their Thanksgiving dinner and got to spend time with Laura's family. I love her nieces, too cute!

When we got home, Mom and I decided that we had not done enough shopping, so we left the oven to self-clean, opened the sliding glass doors for the smell and headed out. About 10 minutes later, we got the dreaded call from Tony that the oven was on fire. We quickly made a U-turn and beat the fire rescue by 2 minutes. I lead the firemen upstairs and this is what happened:

Apparently, the turkey drippings caught on fire in the oven. No biggie, we all lived, but the house stunk (still does). But the firemen were great, and our neighbors all came out and shared in our laughter/crying over the lost stove (we bought a new one at Best Buy today).



My birthday was great and has been celebrated all weekend. Thank you to all those who wished me a Happy Birthday!