30 November 2017

We had a family reunion over Thanksgiving in Orlando last week!  My parents and my brothers and sister and their families all came, and it was a great big cousin-fest.  We'd started planning this reunion in Orlando well before we even thought about moving here, so in the end it worked out very nicely for us.

My parents rented an enormous house in Kissimmee, which had a nice big kitchen too.  Mr. Brown and I considered inviting everyone to our house for Thanksgiving dinner, but instead we packed up most of our kitchen and carted it down there.  My Oklahoma brother and sister-in-law had to leave on Friday morning early, so we had Thanksgiving on Wednesday instead so we could eat leftovers on Thursday before they left.  There was so much food and it was so delicious (leek mashed potatoes.  maple pecan sweet potatoes.) except for the rolls and the taro, which was experimental. Also we made pecan pie bars and pumpkin bars instead of pies this year... and while they were delicious, we missed the pies.

We swam in the pool at the house and in the community pool, played lots of card games, watched the Macy's parade, and went to Downtown Disney together.  We had a surprise birthday party for Grandma and Uncle Chris, complete with pinata that Nut Brown made, shaped like a birthday cake.  Every night, some of the siblings/spouses would hang out in the hot tub after the kids went to bed, and that was some fun bonding time too.  My dad was sick for the last couple days of the reunion, too.  Also we got to meet Chris's friend Kelsie, who we liked very much.  I guess everybody else got to meet her, because Chris had brought her to our house before.  (I really love living closer to my family.)

One night we had everybody up to our house to give them the tour and have marshmallow wars (thanks to Grandma).  Grandpa took us out to Golden Corral for dinner.  I'm so glad that we got together!

Cousins

(Basically all of us showed up in minivans... the exceptions being my brother who's not married and my brother/sister-in-law who have no kids... I think my dad thought it was funny because he commented on it in their Christmas letter.  My uncle Bob hates minivans because he says they took all the romance out of cars... but they're extremely popular because they're so PRACTICAL.  We love ours.)  

13 November 2017

Rosebud has this adorable interrogatory sound that she makes whenever she's interested in hearing more about something, and sometimes as a stand-in for an affirmative.  It sounds something like "ummnnnh?" but it impossible to reproduce with letters.  She makes this noise, for instance, any time someone mentions candy, or walk, or dinner when she's hungry. 


A few nights ago she woke up with a tummy bug and was throwing up in the sink.  Mr. Brown and I were looking at the vomit to see if we could tell if she'd eaten something bad or if it was an illness, and I said, 'What is that?' and he said, "I don't know, maybe dried fruit?" and our sweet sick baby said, "ummnnnh?" because the idea that she might get some dried fruit appealed even in the middle of the night, even right after vomiting.

11 November 2017

Because my babies are adorable

5 November 2017

Bobo came sleeping into our room on Saturday morning and said, "Good morning" and raised his arm to rub his eyes.  On the underside of his arm, there was a lizard.  I overreacted and he said in surprise, "But Mom, he's a friendly lizard!  He was on my nightlight!"  Florida- where the wildlife is everywhere.  But at least it's friendly.

3 November 2017

Last night we hosted our first practice Thanksgiving dinner here in Florida.  Mr. Brown made this wonderful turkey, and thanksgiving lentils, and mashed sweet potatoes with lime, honey and cumin, and rolls, and a cornbread/wheat bread chorizo stuffing.  Also sweet potato bars (YUM) and taro pie (not so yum) and Rose Pink made a mango custard pie based on the pear custard pie recipe (super DOUBLE yum).  It was an adventure in eating.  Our guests made new dishes that we had already had before, but it turned out that our living room/ballroom is an excellent place to host a large group of people, much better than our house in Michigan.  There are still some kinks to iron out, but the dinner went well and we enjoyed our own food even if not the others'!

2 November 2017

We had our practice Thanksgiving on the Day of the Dead this year, and we had so much fun painting our faces that I think we'll do it again next year!  Makeup was on sale at the Halloween store at 50% off.

Mr. Brown made a bunch of new and interesting Thanksgiving dishes, including cornbread/wheat bread/chorizo stuffing, Thanksgiving lentils, taro pie, sweet potato bars, cumin lime honey mashed sweet potatoes and jerk turkey.  Thumbs up to the stuffing, the lentils and the turkey sauce... the turkey itself cooked so quickly that he didn't get to sauce it.  The jerk sauce itself turned out to be a beautiful thing and we have eaten it on many other dishes since.  The taro pie was not really edible and the sweet potatoes were okay but not amazing. 

The guests we had were not as adventurous as we were, but it was good to keep the tradition.  And we enjoyed our food for sure!



I decorated the top of the sweet potato bars to honor the holiday!