Underdown Thanksgiving 2012

As you know I have been very excited about thanksgiving this year.  I was excited to have a full day with Brandon, start some new traditions and COOK good food.  I was pretty nervous but I felt like I could handle it.  I took my hens out of the freezer on Monday so they would have plenty of time to thaw out.  They still had ice crystals on the inside on Thursday and that kinda concerned me but they seemed to work out fine.  I've always heard of needing to take the insides out, or theres a little bag...well I don't think that applies to hens, I couldn't find any bag but I found some pretty nasty inside stuff so I took that out.  Brandon told me to "scrape it out like a pumpkin" but of course he wouldn't come to help at all!
Heres a couple things I learned this year :

• The disposable pans will crack and leak juice all over your oven if you move them in and out of the oven. This will cause a lot of smoke....
• In a 5th wheel you cannot pull the rack out "a little" to baste the hens....The rack will fall down and cause a big mess as you are frantically trying to keep your hens off the bottom on your oven and floor.....

Other than these two almost disasters the dinner turned out great! We had a little food.....

• Two hens ( 5 pounds each)
• 1 small ham
• Green Bean Casserole
• Yams
• Cranberry Sauce
• Corn
• Hawaiian Rolls
• Deviled Eggs
• Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
• Stuffing
• Apple Pie
• Cherry Pie
• Chocolate Cream Pie

Yes its a lot of food but I ran into a couple problems when I was making my list for Thanksgiving...I COULDN'T Leave anything out or it wouldn't have felt like thanksgiving.  I am a HUGE fan of leftovers....I really think there is nothing better than a turkey sandwich with stuffing, gravy, mayo, pepper on my favorite bread...YUM!! I actually think the leftover sandwiches are better than the dinner itself so I HAD to make sure we had enough for leftovers.   Brandon made fun of me and said "yeah you have to have your leftovers".  This is our 3rd Thanksgiving together and he has ALWAYS made fun of me for needing my left overs. Well I served him up a plate of leftover thanksgiving yesterday and he was speechless, said it was amazing and just kept saying "yum, yum, yum" HA! so I guess someone will stop making fun of me for needing my leftovers now :) 

Sure doesn't get much better than this... :) 

 I had to get a ham  because Brandon really loves ham, I am not much of a fan but I couldn't leave it off the menu.  I made the ham in the crock pot this year and it was amazing, even if I am not the biggest fan.   I put brown sugar down on the bottom, ham on top, brown sugar and then a can of pineapple chunks and juice and let it cook for 7 hours on low.  It was the most tender, sweet ham...yum!! And what about the sides, I HAD to have all the sides to make it a perfect dinner...so you see...you probably would have done the same thing as me :) 

I did pretty well and had everything ready to eat at 2:45 and it was still hot :)  I was worried about making my moms stuffing, her stuffing is my absolute favorite, I did alright I put too much poultry seasoning in but its still edible.  I made Brandon's moms mashed potatoes (this is the only  side he wanted) so I was extra nervous about getting those right but I did, he said they were perfect!! 

So all in all it was a very fun day and I feel like an accomplished wife now that I have made my very own thanksgiving dinner in our 5th wheel kitchen none the less. Wait until I have a whole house with a full kitchen and oven!! :) 

Lighting the pilot in the oven :)

The Hen all ready to go in the oven :) 

"Just Basting my birds" 

ALL DONE!! :) 

Using my kitchen aid for Mashed Potatoes :) 

Brandon carving the hen 

Dinner is served!! 

Happy Husband! 

We relaxed after dinner and then we decided we would go check out black friday...when figured since we are in such a small town it wouldn't be so bad.  Artesia only has 11,000 people in it so it was the perfect time.  We went to Kmart cause they had a 50 inch TV for $288...well we stood in line for an hour and a half, we were at the front of the line and we didn't even get a TV cause they only had 6! We were pretty bummed so we headed over to Walmart and we got an iPad and a $75 gift card to Walmart and a 50 Inch TV for $225.  Brandon is very happy now, all he wanted was a HUGE tv and recliners in his home so now he has both :) 

Sitting outside of Kmart....all for nothing!

But then he got one....Happy boy!! :)

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving and if you went to black friday I hope you got some great deals!! 

Thanksgiving Prep

• Plan Menu....check
• Beg parents for recipes....check
• Create grocery List....check
• Grocery shopping....check
• Create oven schedule....check
• Enough propane?....check!

So as most of you know, this will be my first Thanksgiving cooking.  Until now the most I have tried to make was a cherry pie! Being it is my first thanksgiving cooking, it was also my first thanksgiving shopping! I went Monday at 9 am thinking most people would be working....WRONG!  It was insane. There were people everywhere and the shelves were bare.  Luckily I was still able to get everything I needed but it was a little crazy to say the least.  Workers everywhere frantically trying to restock the shelves as people were taking the items as fast as they could.  I saw a few times the boxes were just cut open, they put a price on them and people took them right out of the box, no unboxing for the workers.  haha it was something else.  The worst was the bread isle.  I have never seen so many people in one place, the best though was probably the mom with her 6 kids that she decided to take thanksgiving day shopping. Wow! The checkout lines were the worst, I think I spent an hour in line.  Even the "20 items or less" lines had people with full carts. I felt bad for the older people that only had one or two things, or the one poor lady that had ONE can of pie filling... :( All in all it took me 4.5 hours roundtrip and I am glad to be at home, not having to leave until next week!

I've emailed my mom for her stuffing recipe and Brandon's mom for her mashed potato recipe.  They were nice enough to give me step by step directions so it should go pretty well.  I am excited but a little nervous given the additional hurdles I have to deal with being in a 5th wheel.  The first hurdle is cooking with propane and not electric.  Its just open flame and its hard to control the temperature.  The second hurdle is the size of the oven, or lack there of.  Its is very small and only one rack so I have to schedule the oven usage throughout the day.  I think I've got a pretty good schedule down so hopefully Thursday will go smoothly.

This is WHY I need a schedule! 

  

We will miss being at home so much but being 27 hours away just makes it too hard to go home.  We will be thinking about you all as you gather together to share laughs and stories throughout the day.  

I am going to miss spending the day with my mom and Ron's family, and I am going to miss my moms stuffing! I am going to miss the house being so full, kids running around, drinks being served and constant chatter.  I am going to miss being at Brandon's parents house, catching up with Jae and what she has going on, Tom's turkey and eating on their special plates.

I am excited for our own day though.  Time to start our own Thanksgiving day traditions.  I am excited to wake up and make breakfast, watch the thanksgiving day parade and go for a walk outside with no snow.  Looks like it will be 71 on Thursday so we can have our windows and doors open and enjoy the fresh air.  I am excited for our first and (hopefully last) thanksgiving alone this year.  I'm excited to spend the day with Brandon in our little house on wheels in Carlsbad, NM...who would have thought huh! This is one thanksgiving we will never forget! 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!! :) 

Cancun, Mexico: HONEYMOON!!!

Most of the time when you have a vacation coming up its all you can think about right? You are so excited and you plan every last detail and count down the days.  Well I counted down the days but in the back of my mind I knew there might the a chance we couldn't go on our HONEYMOON.  There is always that chance when you are in an apprenticeship, or linework in general.  Superstorm Sandy hitting days before we were supposed to leave didn't help.  I didn't know if Brandon would get sent to storm or not.  Thankfully he didn't.  The job he is on though, had a deadline and sure enough Friday night his foreman says he probably can't go on our trip unless they can get someone else down here.  My stomach dropped but I also wasn't surprised.  About 8pm Friday night we found out he could go and we were relieved and started to get excited.  Being in the apprenticeship you never know where you are going to be.  We had bought our tickets out of Denver, CO thinking it was pretty central to the Mtn States territory ( Montana, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Southern Idaho).  We were not predicting we would be in New Mexico though. We tried to get our tickets changed to a airport in NM or TX but it was going to be about $1500-2000 to change our tickets and we were NOT going to do that. So we got in the king ranch and drove 10+ hours to Denver.  Really wishing we had my car here, we left it in Salt Lake...it goes without saying the diesel isn't the best fuel saving rig...oh well we had no choice and it was fun.

To say that the resort and Cancun was beautiful, breathtaking, incredible, amazing, ect, is a complete understatement.  It was unimaginable.  It was just warm enough, about 87-90 the whole time.  Warm enough you could lay out and not get too hot every 5 minutes.  The resort was pretty empty, felt like we had the whole place to ourselves and we loved it! We went snorkeling on the worlds second largest reef and saw some of the most amazing fish! My favorite was the little black ones with bright turquoise spots that glowed! We went to Isla Mujeres and got massages on the white sand beach, drank out of fresh coconuts and swam in the Caribbean.  We relaxed and laid by the pool or on the beach for the most part of our vacation and it was perfect.  We went to the spa one afternoon for "Mr and Mrs Underdown" couples massage and it was one of the best massages I have ever had! We did yoga on the beach one morning and it was incredible! Brandon was a trooper :)  It was truly a trip of a lifetime and I cannot imagine it being any better!

Flying home we flew back at night.  This was the first time I had flown at night since meeting Brandon and it had a whole new affect on me.  Flying at night you see the hundreds of thousands of lights on in  cities, towns, and neighborhoods.  I couldn't help but think how proud I am of Brandon.  I am so proud of him for finding a career he is madly in love with.  I am so proud of him for going after it for years and never giving up.  I am so proud of him for being 100% dedicated to the trade and his work.  He spends so much time learning, doing homework, reading in his books, working out the math problems, going over what he did and learned at work that day.  He truly loves it and is passionate to the core about it.  It was incredible to me as I looked down at all those lights on that my husband knows how to turn those on.  My husband knows how to get power to a house so they can have heat, lights, a home.  My husband is learning how to build new line to housing developments or repair old ones that have been broken.  My husband is a hero that many don't remember or think about.  Power is such a thing we take for granted because its always there, I know I never thought twice about where my power came from before I met Brandon.  I am so proud of him for being such an amazing man and having a career that is essential to peoples lives! <3