Thanksgiving 2011 and tree hunting

Thanksgiving has come and gone long ago, but the pics of the turkey still are fresh in my mind and I wish I could taste the juicy bird once again.  22 pounds of sweet meat did not last that long with all of the friends and relatives we had out here.

Here was the bird.  I have been the one to cook the bird ever since we have been married and I got a great recipe from Jacob Van Ewyk in San Jose that makes it the best turkey ever.

This is when I would like to have a 6 burner stove.  Gas would also make it easier, but we made due and still had room to spare.

Here is the gang for Thanksgiving assembled and ready to dig in.

James has not been eating much solids  up to this point, but I thought Thanksgiving is a perfect time to break him in.  He did like some of the stuff contrary to what his expression is saying.

We then had a bunch of friends over that night for some games.  Poor mans taboo was on the schedule and of course the men dominated the game.

James is getting more used to food now.

Brenda sometimes goes online while at home with him and he likes to grab for the computer.  She decided it may be fun for him to play with our old slow dinosaur.  He does enjoy punching the keys, but I am always a little worried staring out this young.  I guess this is what the digital age looks like.

Two weekends ago we went to get our Christmas tree from the National Forest.  This year we had friends go with us and we made the trek out into the forest to pick out the perfect tree.  Last year there was about 4' of snow here and this year there was only as trace in the shadows.  That made it easier while toting a kid around and our friends had a  1 month old that was only about 8lbs so we were kind of glad there was not a lot of snow.

Here are Izumi, Noah, Brenda and James picking out a tree.

We found the one behind us and thought it would be a good time for a family photo.

Then back at the truck James thought the tree looked great.

While I was away at work Brenda got a  couple of pictures of James in front of his first Christmas tree.

Last weekend we also got to spend some time with Chris and Izumi and the girls coordinated the kids to dress alike.  I am unilaterally opposed to dressing kids alike unless they are twin, but I have to admit they do look cute.

Our neighbors have a big pole with wires going up to it and a sprinkler at the top.  It looked weird when the temperatures were higher, but with the big freeze up here they turn the water on and then it looks like this.  When the lights are on at night it looks pretty cool.

We plan on staying around the house for Christmas and just hanging out.  I have a lot of parts for the bike arriving and am going to try and get the motor together and few other things in order over the few day break, but there is constant progress being made.