Thanksgiving report

Yeah, so I haven't posted in ages. Which is not to say that I haven't been writing, at least.
Much has happened, most significantly the birth of Lillian Monroe!
Congratulations to the family!

Thanksgiving was the tradition two-meal affair for us. Thursday we went to D's dad's new place, about an hour away. D's sister joined us. I brought homemade popovers, broccoli casserole and stuffing, and a store-bought pie. It was a nice afternoon & evening. Before I collapsed into bed that night, I double-checked my ambitious recipes to see what needed to be prepared in advance for the next day's feast. As a result, I was up until about 1:40am making herb maple butter and the beginning of pumpkin soup.

The next day, I got up early and started the cooking/cleaning thing. By 11, the turkey had been in the oven for 2 hours, and I had made half of the dishes for the day. My oldest brother and his wife and two boys (14 & 11 yrs old) came over for the first time in many years. They'd been staying at her brother's place in the Wine Country with his family. Around 1, D's mother and her husband arrived. Around that same time, I was called by my work to give a quote to someone at at a big production studio who had lost about 100GB of data.

Here's what I made for Friday: popovers, broccoli casserole, pumpkin soup, turkey with maple herb butter, stuffing, mashed potatoes with buttermilk, bacon bits & chives, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, almonds and marshmallows, green beans with walnuts and walnut oil, and pecan pie. I did not make the pie crust. If you've ever seen a pie crust made by me, you'd understand why.

Here's what happened with the work quote: we could save their data, but to do it as quickly as they needed would run tens of thousands of dollars, and was outside the budget for this particular project.

It's quite an interesting experience going straight from navigating the four cousins who are wrestling in the hallway, to explaining to an update So. Cal. producer why our service will cost 40K to do ASAP, to chopping yams and offering drinks to the adult guests. If I'd gotten mixed up with what I was doing, it could have been really ugly.