it's been a while...

I haven't written here since before thanksgiving so get ready for a doozy.

1. Thanksgiving, Tiff, Nick and Karch visiting:We had a great time with all our thanksgiving visitors. I realized I absolutely love to slave over a hot oven for hours!! :) I really do! I sent out my husband and Karch to surf and the visitors out to drive around till 2 and dinner will be ready when they come back. I babied my 21 lb. bird like no other, even brining it (letting it soak in salt water, herbs and spices of choice) for16 hours before roasting it. It turned out great and brining does make a difference. Actually everything turned out really really good. Except the peas. I burnt the peas haha... out of all things. :)








Here's what I made from scratch. I wanted to do EVERYTHING from scratch:
21lb. Turkey
homemade stuffing
Yams with pecans and brown sugar
Creamy Mashed potatoes
green bean casserole
Rolls (Karch did these and they were SO good!)
Peas
Carrots
Cranberry Relish (this was amazing!)
Gravy (ran out of time so i didn't do this by scratch)
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Crumb Pie
Pumpkin Chessecake
And it was all so so so yummy!! I started at about 7am and finished at 2pm and I loved every bit of it!

2. What we have been doing since thanksgiving:
Since then, finals, work, and exercise have been taking a lot of our time. The end of the semester is coming and so is a lot of studying with it! The 10 day Christmas vacation will be much needed after this week.
This has been one of those weeks with Jeanne. Boy oh boy. She has a crazy week every so often and this week was it, on finals week... perfect Jeanne, thanks. So I come in on Monday morning and guess what Jeanne has been craving all weekend? STEAK! And she wants it bad. So I call all 81 steakhouses on the island to see who is open and I found one. An hour drive and lots of wining later, we get there. Of course Jeanne's steak wasn't cooked right, sends it back, she's upset and blah blah blah... so when she final receives her perfect steak, she takes one bite and is full. After all that? oh brother. So what does Jeanne do when she is down and out? By flat screen TVs!! Of course!! Who doesn't do that when they're not having the greatest day? We go to Best Buy, buy a 32'' flat screen TV and we're out of there. Phhheeewwf. I was going to tell her she doesn't really need a another flat screen TV since she has one in every room... but I didn't. And so guess who realized she had too many flat screen TVs when she got home? Big J. So who did she give her extra to to put in there casa?
Us. :)Thanks big J for this lovely addition in our bedroom. We are not really ones to have TVs in our bedroom but hey, guess we are now.

3. What we woke up to this morning:
Keep in mind that this week has been pretty busy. We also had are dear friends Rory and Ashley come to Oahu to stay with us! We're so excited to have them stay! Of course we have finals till Friday at 10am but after,it's all fun!
Well all last night I kept waking up from the rain and then by this morning there was lightening and thunder. Well, we got a pretty big shower last night. It flooded Jeanne's whole property and not to mention... our guest bedroom. Poor Rory and Ashley found a little swimming pool in their room after breakfast. It rained really hard.
Jeanne and I were supposed to go out to lunch in Honolulu today but the roads were all shut down. I walk into Jeanne's house to say good morning when all the sudden Henry's( Jeanne's 90 yr-old boyfriend, they've been dating for like 40 years) nurse comes to us worried and says "Henry is tired". Well due to Henry's medical past,Jeanne instantly knows Henry is going through a stroke! We all rush into his room, I call 911, we try to keep Henry alive, Jeanne is crying/yelling, I call 911 again to see where they are and they are at the wrong house, ambulance is having a hard time getting around due to flooding, I run outside to flag down the ambulance and drop my phone in the knee high flood water, I'm soaking wet from head to toe from rain and flood water, I chase around paramedics because they don't know where to enter the house, paramedics come in and take out Henry, Jeanne is upset etc. etc. etc.
Luckily we hear Henry is doing fine. We found 4 really big leaks in Jeanne's house... my goodness.
Here are some pictures from today:

Brown dirty water everywhere!!

Ya see all that stuff in her drive way that's brown, ya that's a huge river going from the mountains, through Jeanne's yard and into the ocean.

Friday at 5 p.m. will be bliss. (Or I hope so.)