Hi I'm Dawn.... and I'm a... SLACKER!

I'm sorry blogger family, I've been so bad with keeping current with the blog posts. Major back up on the highway of life. Let's see.. where did I last leave off? For starters; Thanksgiving was nice. Very quiet and lowkey. I cooked and dinner consister of me, Jeff & my mom; with my brother and his girlfriend stopping by later for dessert. My younger sister is a nurse, so she worked.. and my other sister, I believe was moving... so she (I think) opted to skip it this year. If I must so say myself, everything turned out delish! I opted to cook the turkey in a bag this year and it turned out great. It definitely does cut the cooking time in half. I can remember as a kid, we would put the turkey in around 7 and we'd eat about 2 or 3. Well this year I put the bird in at 11 and it was done by 3:30(ish). Where were these oven bags all those years ago? While we're on the subject, I have this vivid memory (or memories) of Thanksgiving when we were teeny boppers: Deptford Skating Rink used to have all night skates (shut ins) which meant you went to the Skating Rink at 7 p.m. on Thanksgiving Eve and it ended at 7 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning! We used to love doing this... but my mom had no mercy. She had us up and helping with Thanksgiving dinner come hell or high water... and man, oh man, were we grumpy! Now that I think back, I'm really perturbed about that. Hmmmph! So anyhoo -- back to thisthanksgiving: it was nice and we have lots of leftovers .. but if I see another piece of turkey any time soon, I may scream. Hope everyone's Thanksgiving was great. It's always nice to prepare such a feast and then sit down and share time with your family. Almost as nice as Christmas but Christmas is always so much more relaxed. I'm doing 2 dishes for Christmas this year ( for the in-laws)... I'm doing my famous (not made famous by me) dip and also a dessert. So if you've got an easy-not many ingredients-desserts for dummies- kind of recipe, then please enlighten me. I'm not the baker in the family... I'm a great cook (toot toot).. but I must have skipped the baking semester in Home Ec. I've got other things to update but I'll close here and then post some more later.. because this could get very lengthy!
Have a Happy Sunday -- Stay out of the rain.

Breakfast with Dad

Went to breakfast on Friday with Poppa. It was nice as usual. He looks good considering all that he's dealing with healthwise lately. I don't know if he feels as well as he looks.. but I sure pray that he does. He's obviously in some pain still with his legs as it was evident when he walked etc.. but I pray every day that some more of his pain is alleviated either by medicine or a small miracle that God bestows upon him. It never seems like enough time to spend with him, what with just going to breakfast and sharing that hour of quality time with him but hopefully one day we can have things back to the way they were.
Ever since the situation with my brother and stepmom we've not been in a position where we felt comfortable just stopping by the house to say hello .. or that we're even welcome to do so, I mean my sister did call the house and tell my stepmom off, so that probably left things a little awkward between everyone. Actually she called me a few weeks ago on my cell to tell me that she didn't mean to be rude and not say hello. That's a whole other post and I've got a lot of work to do yet.
So caio for now....

Trying to keep up

Wow, life is just ever so busy. I've been putting a lot of energy into the food drive and I'm happy to report that it's coming together rather nicely. I think we have 5 families lined up so far. That's a good start. Oy, work is crazy. I just finished 12 days straight last Thursday... only to have off Friday and start back in on Saturday .. working through to this Thursday! I guess in the end, it's nice to have the overtime but somewhere along the way my sanity started to get away from me. Wait, that's right, I lost that a long time ago! Anyhoo - my week is every busy again this week but mostly in good ways. Monday and Weds are school nights of course, Tuesday I have plans for dinner with a friend and Thursday folks I am high tailing it out of town! I'm leaving work at 2 p.m. and heading to A.C. with my side-kick. (my sister).. We haven't had one of our overnight getaways in A.C. for a while so we're in much need of it. We're actually going with a "close friend of the family". I say that because we've known her since we were tots (now we're fully grown tarts!).. and she's been a lot of things to us over the years. She's been very motherly but within boundaries, she's been a confidant, a friend, a relative. She's in her 70's or early 80's .. and it's her birthday so we're taking her to A.C.(her idea) and taking her to dinner etc... (before we head out on our own for the evening). It's always a nice time when we go. Much fun to be had. I'm very grateful for friends and family and the memories we make.

Nieces .... Simply the bestest~

I passed!

Inspection, that is. I really didn't think my car was going to pass because I know I need new front tires and possibly even an alignment. They kinda go hand in hand, no? Anyway, I asked my mom to take it through since I had to work on Saturday, and when she called I thought for sure that she was going to read off the list of why I failed. But no, I passed. To be honest, I said I prayer at my desk yesterday and basically I told God that I knew what I needed to do to get my car in safe/sound condition and I promised I would do it, but just not to let my car fail. I truly believe it was by the grace of God that I passed.. I also prayed for nice weather on Halloween for the kids and for it to be a safe uneventful-in-a-negative-way day, and it turned out just as such! I'm tellin' ya, people.. prayer works.
So long as you're not just praying when you need or want something... <- (my opinion)