We're Back!!

I will have to upload my photos before you can see all of the snowy-ness that we dealt with for Thanksgiving. Since my Mom and Dad couldn't come to us, we decided last minute(or the Saturday before Turkey day) to drive to Washington to be with them. We left Saturday after the delicious baby shower that was at my house about 1pm. We reached snowy or rather slushy Ogden around midnight. Horrible!! It then took us an extra two hours on Sunday to get to Chewelah. UUGGGHHH! We had a nice trip and it was fun to enjoy the snow by looking out the window at it. Have I mentioned that I am completely acclimated to Arizona and officially am a weiney? Just thought you should know. Thursday, I made whole wheat rolls, a fantastic Pumpkin Chiffon cake, haricot verts(aka small green beans), salad, and I spatchcocked the turkey. "What?", I hear you cry! Spatchcocking is when you take the backbone out of the turkey and then smoosh it flat as a pancake. It makes the most hideous cracking sound, but is so worth it! For a 12-14 pound bird, it cooks in 70 minutes! Our 12.3 lb clucker only took 60 minutes. Last year my 24 lb baby took 2 hours and 10 minutes. Whew! By taking out the cavity you cut the cooking time in half and it is all golden brown on the outside and crunchy, but tender and moist on the inside! Go look here, Martha will show you how. It was fantastic! While I was cooking the turkey, my Mom had just enough time to do the mashed potatoes. She almost didn't make it! That's fast people!!!! Enough about food. The drive home was more atrocious than the drive up, if that is possible. We left at 7am and had to turn around because my parents found our laptop hiding by the couch. We left again at 7:20 and didn't make it to Panguitch, UT until 1am. That's right, 18 hours in the car to make a 14 hour trip. We hit every blizzard and storm between WA and UT. Pathetic! Then, Sunday morning it was more of the same...blah, blah, blah, snow, slick, scary, pee...I will leave it there. We did make it home though and boy were we all glad to see 60 degree weather. My tomatoes and peppers froze while I was gone, so I have nothing to show for all of the little neighbor boy's hard work! Crap!