Knock Knock!

At our house Austin, our 5 year old has discovered the joy of jokes. Well, he's discovered the idea of jokes. He just doesn't get jokes. He was ruined by Ready, Set, Read, and Laugh by Cole and Calmenson. There are a few knock knock jokes in there, and once he learned those, he was off and ruining, er, I mean running, with the jokes. Thankfully my mom gifted him with a few additional age-appropriate joke books so we've been relieved of the two or three main good jokes he knows, and all the scads of terrible jokes he makes up. Anyway, I've got knock-knock on the brain. ;)

I think this is the longest stretch I've gone without posting since I started this blog. We've been on vacation for the holidays, and it's just been easier to go cold turkey from blog land. I've peeked and commented on a few blogs, but I'm hoping that in the next week or two I'll be back to full speed. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll just go hide in the bed with the covers over my head as I am thrown full speed into "regular life" again next week. Sigh.

Speaking of peeking at blogs, you should go check out Mrs. Fuzz's recent post about the changes in her lovely LEO husband. Like many of us feel about our spouses, she loves and adores her dude but there sure is a lot to deal with if you transition into LEO work with your fella from another life. Go check out her post and be encouraged that you aren't alone!

Where's my cover?!?!

Slept less than 4 hours (in spats of 1 hour, 1 hour, and 2 hours while Austin was screaming. That's max, obviously. WHAT'S WRONG WITH THAT KID?!?!?) last night so I sure could have used some "cover" today to give me a break. NO GO.

So now I'm turning to you all! Now that it is dark before dinner here, we are stuck inside with "nothing to do" after dinner and before bedtime. On days when Hubs works (swing shift), I think at the end of the night that everyone is lucky to still be alive because we didn't kill each other. ;)

So cover me, peoples. What do you do to pass the time with your crazy small kids (and screaming baby) before bedtime?!!? argh!!! I'm going to go crazy!!

Can I still talk about Thanksgiving?

I know I'm a little slow to get with the program, but what did YOU do for Thanksgiving? I'm always interested to hear from the families of first responders how they celebrate holidays -- and WHEN! :)

My husband had to work on Thursday, so we had Thanksgiving at the police station! I kid you not. I tried to get my man to have Thanksgiving "lunch" but he was not interested. hmpf. All the other officers on his shift that day did, but I guess with DH old habits die hard, i.e. Thanksgiving Dinner must be eaten for DINNER!?!? Well whatever. Anyhow... We had dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, prime rib, and roasted butternut squash. Oh my! We got the prime rib already seasoned from Costco and just stuck it in the oven with a thermometer in it and Man-oh-Man was it tasty! (There was a little bit more discussion than that, we had to agree on how to cook it which was a perfect storm for a marital spat of course.) I also made Paula Dean's Pumpkin Gooey Cake, which was of course DELISH and a wonderful replacement for Pumpkin Pie -- if you are like me and love the idea of the Pumpkin Pie but can't really stand to eat it! lol.

I sent the cake and all the necessary paper products ahead with the husband. I packed up the food in a bunch of plastic containers, packed up the kids, and we drove over to the station -- the kids insisting on their "fancy shoes" for Thanksgiving Dinner, of course!-- and had dinner with DH. It was very short but sweet. A few other officers and a dispatcher came and had a few samples.... mostly of the cake, though, since they had all eaten before shift.

What did you do and how did you -- or DID you? -- celebrate?