Move over Turkey, Time For Christmas!!

Read it and weep, Dear Reader: I have two Christmas presents to go, and then I'm done. Today, Wiley and I picked up a few things we needed. We walked into town. We walked back from town. We got splashed by cars whizzing by too fast on a sidewalk too close to the street. But by golly, we got Christmas presents.

And now I'm listening to Bob Rivers. In case you don't know, his group makes parodies, and they have some good songs, which made me wonder what others top Christmas tunes were. Here are my top 10:

1. The 12 Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers
2. O Holy Night
3. Charlie Brown's Christmas songs by Vince Guaraldi - all of them are just realllly good but I love the jazzy version of What Child is This
4. Sleigh Ride by the Boston Pops
5. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer by Burl Ives
6. The Chimney Song by Bob Rivers
7. Mele Kalikimaka by Bing Crosby (you know this one from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Clark is fantasizing about the saleslady taking off her red swimsuit)
8. Holly Jolly Christmas by Burl Ives
9. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer by Elmo and Patsy
10. Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree by Brenda Lee

So Dear Reader, tell me what your songs are. And I'm tagging Cara, Heather and Spyder, so you guys have to do it! And boogie on down while you make cookies! I will be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Melinda and I had our Thanksgiving lunch. It was just the two of us. We had a full spread. Check out all of the dishes here. We had to make some of it last night because we just have the one casserole dish, and several dishes were a challenge since there is no Campbell's condensed soup here in Bosnia. We had to use powdered cream of mushroom and cream of broccoli soup, but they all turned out pretty well. Our "bird" was a smoked turkey breast that we just warmed up. It turned out pretty darned well.

Melinda here. Wiley wrote the top part but then said I could add or edit (he left out a word up there). This is what cooking's all about, Dear Reader: making do with what you got to see how it'll turn out. And I'm pretty impressed with how we were able to pull it all together. The turkey was interesting...parts of it tasted like deli meat, while parts of it tasted like real turkey. Of course, I'll be very happy when I can make a real bird, where you pull the meat off the bones (though I'm happy not to be dealing with bones), but this was better than I thought it would be.

So have a happy Thanksgiving, Dear Reader, and remember: doorbusters start at 4 am!