Thanksgiving

Like last year, we started the day with our friends from the neighbourhood where we had our rental house, doing the 'Turkey Trot' fun run at Rockenbaugh. It's an excuse to get together and have fun under the guise of attempting to burn off some calories before the excesses of Thanksgiving begin. With the amount of cakes and cookies consumed by the kids, I think there was a net calorie gain, but hey, that's Thanksgiving!

Turkey Trotting

We popped home for a quick shower before heading to the Ruck's (lovely friends from David's footy/soccer team) for one of Carrie's father's legendary Bloody Mary's. They had a house full of family and friends and it was nice to meet some new people. The boys had a kickabout, despite the pouring rain that had just rolled in. We witnessed how to cook turkeys, eight of them I think, deep fried Texas style. It took the whole 'man-cooks-meat-outside' thing to another level. The turkeys looked amazing, but we were saving ourselves...

The Ruck's Dragon Tavern - The best outdoor man-cave I've ever seen!

...for what could only be described as a feast of epic proportions at Anmol (Rob's colleague) & Tom's in Aledo. We enjoyed a lovely afternoon and evening with the Mullins family, they gave us the true Thanksgiving experience, even though they claim that they under-did it by Tom's family's standards, I don't know if I'll feel hungry again!

We're resting before dessert. Evan LOVES the massage chair.

Tornado warnings

Last night we had our second tornado warning this month, which is unusual for this time of year. The first time I had no clue what was going on, the weather suddenly got stormy and we could hear faint sirens in the distance. I actually went outside as I thought the alarm might be coming from the house. If it wasn't for Alice calling me from school to say she had been locked in because of the tornado warning I would never have known. Thankfully the storm passed over very quickly and no damage was done.

The second tornado warning came at 3:30am last night. Rob and I were awoken by the loud 'amber alert' on our phones, which is a different sound to the alarm clock. A few minutes later Alice was woken by the alert on her phone. The three of us were in the lounge, Rob had the TV on trying to find out what was happening, we could barely hear the sirens over the wind. Suddenly the wind picked up and it became very noisy so I rushed upstairs to grab the boys out of bed, and we all piled into the downstairs toilet, which I assume is the best place to shelter as it's partially under our main staircase, in the centre of the house an has no windows. The kids thought their half hour camp-out was very exciting, Bess on the other hand was not impressed!

Downstairs loo camp-out

In the eye of the storm.