A Slide-show, a Recipe, and Useless Musical Trivia

This morning I'm home alone, being snowed in. Matt is out doing snow removal, Ella is at school, and Eva and Sophie, who are off track until January 5, are stranded at my sister's in Roseville, Ca., until at least tomorrow - if not Wednesday. I took them there on Friday, before the first storm, for the twins' and Josie's birthday parties. Yesterday I attempted a pick-up between storms, but turned around in Truckee when I saw that people were already chaining up, and traffic wasn't moving. So, in other words, I timed everything just right ;-)

Finally, here is a long overdue Thanksgiving weekend slide-show. We spent Thanksgiving day at my sister Janene's with her family and our mother, and then on Friday we headed over to Marv and Joanie's (Matt's side) in Valley Springs. It was really a fab weekend with lots of great food and fun excursions. My sister made a fantastic Thanksgiving dinner that was appreciated even more than normal after its late arrival - about 90 minutes. It never quite goes as planned, but it turned out delicious!!! Unfortunately, I didn't take very many pictures at Janene's. There only a few at the beginning. On Friday we went to the Mercer Caverns , and then to the Big Trees at the Calaveras Big Trees State Park with Matt's brother Travis, his two boys, and some of Joanie's family (she is my new monster in-law. Matt's mother Cherie died in 2005). On Saturday, when the guys went golfing, Joanie took us girls to the small town of Sutter Creek to look at the shops. I wanted EVERYTHING, but was good and only came home with a small book about the year I was born.

On our drive from my sister's to Valley Springs, Matt did something unexpectedly touching! There are wild turkeys in that area, and as we were driving along, we could see something ahead, just off the road, that looked like three big wild turkeys. As we passed them though, we saw that they were actually vultures eating a freshly killed deer (road kill). As we passed, I said that I wished I could take some pictures. I wasn't really serious, which I thought was obvious, but a little ways up the road when he had a chance, Matt started to slow down to turn around. See, he really does love me! He doesn't like to stop for anything on a trip, and wants to get there yesterday. The girls have all increased their bladder capacity exponentially, thanks to passing hundreds of bathrooms on road trips while needing to stop. I told him to keep driving though, so sorry - no dead deer/vulture pics in the slide-show.

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As requested, my mother in-law Cherie's roll recipe - in her handwriting. I used butter, not margarine. The dough was very moist, more so than something like pizza dough. I doubled the recipe, and rolled out four pizza sized rounds for cutting. I was surprised at how much yeast it calls for, but it's not a mistake. Your house will smell slightly like a brewery.

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And now for some useless musical trivia. I've been in an Otis Redding mood since posting his Christmas songs on my musical Advent Calendars, so I turned to Wikipedia a few days ago, as I always do in such cases, to dig a little deeper. To my surprise, I learned that 'Try a Little Tenderness' was written in 1932, and one of the first artists to record it was Bing Crosby. Well! What a difference a little Soul makes! Feast your ears

And if this is your first time hearing Otis Redding's BRILLIANT rendition, repent now and just pretend that you've always love it.