Sheri and I went to Toledo for Thanksgiving with my family. Here is a little summary:

- Wednesday -

I went into work for just a half day in the morning. I got back home around 12:30 PM and we packed up the car with our bags we packed the night before. We also loaded up the GPS and the XM radio.

We would have left shortly after that but we didn't schedule the mail to be stopped until the day after Thanksgiving and the mailman had not delivered the mail yet. While we waited for the mail to arrive I had a couple turkey sandwiches for lunch, so the extra time worked out OK anyway. The mail showed up before I finished my second sandwich so we ended up only being about 20 minutes behind schedule.

We started driving around 1:20 PM and everything was going great until we got on I-294 from I-55. Parking lot. I think it took us about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get from there to the Indiana tollway. It normally only takes about an hour.

Traffic was fine until about halfway there. There was some bridge construction that only left one lane open for a couple miles. That added another 30 minutes of delay to our trip.

The final delay on this trip came one mile before the last Indiana toll plaza. Another parking lot. It took us almost one hour to creep from the "Tollbooth 1 Mile Ahead" sign to the actual tollbooth.

The normal four hour drive ended up taking more than six hours. We stayed with my sister and brother-in-law and they were waiting for us to have a hot dinner. They made a pot of delicious white chili, three packages of grocery store sushi, and cheese and crackers. Sheri and I split a piece of pumpkin pie for dessert. I loved the white chili. I can't believe Gourmand Brad never tried this before. It is definitely going to be added to my repertoire.

We got in late plus we were worn out from the stressful drive so I think we went to bed before 10 PM.

- Thursday - Thanksgiving -

Thursday morning I got up and took my still-frozen dough ball out of the refrigerator to defrost. Lisa made some cinnamon coffee cake the day before for breakfast and we all sat around the kitchen table for a while talking and having breakfast.

Mom and Dad came over in the morning and brought the dishes they signed up for. I think I my dough was ready to go and I started forming hard rolls between 1 PM and 1:30 PM. Tim started heating the deep fryer oil around this time.

The oil was ready to go when I put my first pan of rolls in the oven. After my second and finale pan of rolls finished baking I went outside to babysit the deep fryer with Tim. There was a constant and extremely cold 20 MPH wind that was not only painful on any exposed skin, but it also kept trying to blow out the flame and prevented the oil from reaching the proper temperature. The oil is supposed to be 375° but we could only keep it at 200°. After a while we put a piece of cardboard almost directly in contact with the deep fryer to protect it from the wind and we were able to get the temperature up to a little over 300°. Before the cardboard we had the grill and a two or three foot diameter metal disk as windbreaks, but there was still a lot of wind that was getting to the flame and preventing enough heat from getting to the pot.







The turkey turned out great and so did everything thing else on the table. This is what I can remember from the menu:

turkey
Mom's stuffing from Grandma's recipe
Stove Top stuffing for Lisa
candied yams
Tim's mashed and seasoned cauliflower
brussel sprouts
green peas
salad greens
my hard rolls
gravy
our family's traditional cold raw cranberry salad (it is not Thanksgiving without this!)
green bean casserole
black olives
green onions

I think that covers it. For dessert we had a pumpkin roll. It was a like a jelly role but the cake part was pumpkin bread-like, and the jelly part was sweetened cream cheese. It was really good, but I missed the pumpkin pie.





After dessert we all watched The Polar Express. We all really enjoyed it. Mom and Dad packed up shortly after that was over. The rest of us watched the Charlie Brown special that was on TV and then Finding Nemo. I was tired and Sheri and I went up to bed before it was over. She finished Finding Nemo in bed and I fell asleep.

- Black Friday -

Sheri and I got up at 5 AM for some Black Friday bargains which I already wrote about on Friday.

Lisa had to go into work for a few hours. She got back home about the same time Mom came over. Dad had to work Friday afternoon and evening. We had a big lunch of leftovers and then the six of us ran some errands.

Tim and Lisa needed ornaments for their new 12-foot Christmas tree so we went to Hobby Lobby. We told them about the 40% off coupons they have on-line, but once we got to the store it said only valid on regularly priced items. All of the stuff they got was already half off. They did have two remote control electric outlets that were $15 each and not on sale. Sheri and I each took one and a coupon an saved them $12.

Then we went back to Office Depot because Tim wanted an external USB numeric keypad like I got.

We stopped at Radio Shack so Tim could get one of the Bluetooth headsets for his cell phone that were on sale for $9.99, but at that price they were all sold out.

We stopped at K-Mart for a few things and then headed to Cabela's. That is always a fun spectacle to experience. I found a Cabela's t-shirt, but by the time it was ready to check-out my early morning adventure was catching up with me and I didn't have the energy to stand in the long lines, so I abandoned my shirt and we left.

For dinner we grilled up the three pounds of spicy Polish sausages I brought from Bobak's. We also fried up a pan of rinsed sauerkraut and onions. Very good.

Mom left for the night and we watched a little bit of the Star Wars movie on TV. Again I was too tired to finish it and went to bed before it was over. Sheri went up too and finished it in bed. I fell asleep listening to the audio book America on my brand new MP3 player. I downloaded the audio book that afternoon from our library back home. It is pretty good. It is like a Tom Clancy story. America is the name of the nuclear submarine in the story and thus the title of the book.

- Saturday - Today -

Lisa had to go into work again this morning. We took our time getting up, showered and dressed. We left the house around 10 AM to meet Lisa and Mom and Dad at Nick's Restaurant for brunch. We always have to get a Nick's fix when we visit Toledo. The last two times we went Tim and I split the Nick Omelet. It is $11 and is almost too much food for the two of us! It is a large oval plate of stuff covered with a large plain omelet. The pile of stuff has sausage, gyro meat, green peppers, potatoes, cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms(?) and probably a bunch of other stuff I am forgetting. Delicious. Sheri loves there fresh hand-cut French fries so she ordered those and a two over-medium eggs. Nick only has one size order of fries and it is huge. It comes on a large oval plate and is stacked as high as he can pile them on. They are some of the best fries ever. Not greasy at all and good potato flavor.

We said our goodbyes to Mom, Dad and Shawn (Shawn was spending the night with them) and then went back to Tim and Lisa's house. Lisa gave me her keys and I followed them in her van.

We packed up the car started our drive back home. After maybe 30 or 45 minutes Lisa called me on my cell phone and asked if I had her keys. Yes I did. They have a spare key so we didn't have to turn around. We will just drop them in the mail on Monday.

The drive back home was much better than the drive on Wednesday. It was easy traffic except for the construction zone when we first entered Illinois. It added about 30 minutes to the drive. I listened to a couple chapters of my audio book on the way home (while Sheri was driving of course) while she listed to the XM radio. The earphones that came with the MP3 player do a really good job of filtering out sound, so her radio playing didn't interfere too much with what I was listening too. Very cool. That will be useful in the future when she want to watch TV and I want to listen to something.

We got home, unpacked, freshened up, and got the house going again. I turned the hot water heater back up from the vacation setting. Sheri started a few loads of laundry. I had a couple of the sausages they sent us home with from Friday's dinner. We have a fire in the fireplace now and are just watching TV. We don't have any movies in from our Blockbuster On-Line account. That is about it for today. We will watch Mad TV and Saturday Night Live late this evening.
We have a few errands and chores to do tomorrow.