Thanksgiving

Somewhat last minute, but I decided to whip up a Thanksgiving morning holiday brunch for us seeing that we would be eating dinner at my brother's house in the afternoon.  Brunch included fancy dishware, which it seems like we never use.  With the girls older now, it's nice to be able to do things like that.  Also last minute, Rich opted to run a 5 mile race yesterday morning.  He left before the kids and I were up so he was on his own for that one.  We had a quiet morning at home with the parade, which seemed to be very Christmas focused this year, on in the background before heading over to my brother's house for family time and more food.

I have much to be thankful for this year, most especially the health of my children.  That's always at the top of my list.  We had a bit of a shunt scare with Anna last week and right as we were about to press the panic button, she returned to normal Anna.  She's had the same shunt without revision for eight and a half years and we've always been under the impression that we'll know when it's malfunctioning, especially now that she's older and can verbalize how she feels.  But she was a weird sick and while some of the symptoms were in line with a shunt malfunction, it was minor and Dr. Google pointed out that those symptoms alone weren't enough to pinpoint a shunt malfunction.  How can one diagnose a shunt malfunction?  A CT scan.  Thankfully, it never reached that point.

Wednesday afternoon, the girls brought home their report cards for the first term of the school year.  Because they don't yet receive letter grades, they were most interested in how their behaviors (uses time constructively, follows classroom rules and routines, organizes work and materials, etc.) would be graded.  They all received "consistently meets expectations" in every category and their teachers wrote thoughtful, positive comments.  I'm very proud of them for their efforts and attitude.      





















As a side note - I tried out a recipe for a cinnamon roll french toast casserole/bake I've seen here and there on different blogs.  It's a basic concept:  you cut up unbaked canned cinnamon rolls and toss them with a french toast mixture of eggs, cream, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla extract.  Sounds yummy, right?  Well, it was but if you try it out, I'd suggest using a large baking dish.  Larger than you think you need.  Also, the blog I went off of stated a cooking time of 18 minutes, which was grossly understated for the size baking dish I used.  I ended up having to cook it for almost 30 minutes because the dough in the middle wasn't baking.  I pushed it around with a spoon, which helped, but it also needed that extra 10 minutes or so of bake time.  So, bakers beware.