November 17, 2012: Liesl’s Fourth Birthday Party!

Today is our only full day in Houston.  I woke up early but didn’t think that I could get out of bed because Dominica and I were sharing a room with Luciana (Liesl slept in Madeline’s room having a mini-slumber party) and any little sound or movement wakes her up and Dominica was sleeping between me and the door so I just lay there for about three hours waiting for everyone to wake up.

All morning and the early afternoon was spent cooking and baking for tonight’s Thanksgiving dinner.  Francesca and Dominica worked all day on that and I hung out in the kitchen and did the pie crusts.  I only had four crusts to make today and one pie filling – of course I had to make the apple pie.  That is now my annual job.  The pie crusts were a huge pain today, I am blaming that on the weather or something.  They just would not hold together and in the end I resorted to piecing together the top of my apple pie.

Boy is there a lot of work that goes into getting Thanksgiving Dinner together.  At four we heading over to the Toccos’ for the actual dinner.  It took about an hour before we were all ready to eat so between four and five we all went nuts on Francesca’s new bread dip which is the best I have ever had by no small margin.  Spinach, mayo, water chestnuts… I’m not sure what else.  I am working on getting that recipe.

Dinner was awesome.  I did my best to eat healthy but really, there was not much hope of that.  I will be working hard all week to purge myself of this meal.  But it was worth it, I think.  I hope so.  Hopefully I did not gain too much today.

After dinner was over we celebrated Liesl’s birthday.  This was her My Little Pony birthday.   Aunt Brittany got her a My Little Pony t-shirt that she had to change into before opening her presents.  For months she has been asking for Midnight Moon, a rare, highly collectible My Little Pony and Dominica has been telling her that a big item like that would have to wait for her birthday so she is really looking for that.  She was so excited to get the huge collector’s pack in which that pony came.  Her pony collection is now significantly bigger than it was before.  She got a really good haul of stuff that she really likes this year.  She was so happy.  She is just adorable.

Francesca made pink and purple vanilla cupcakes for Liesl’s birthday cake.  Everyone loved those.  After the party was over most everyone headed home to bed.  Liesl, Emily and I went out to Joe’s newly completely theater built in the garage to watch some of Jurassic Park which neither Liesl nor Emily have ever seen.  I have been thinking that it is about time to have Liesl watch that.  She was very excited to watch a movie in the theater.

We didn’t make it too far into the movie before Joe, Britt, Dominica and Bennie came out to watch a movie so we turned that one off and put in Brave the new Disney Pixar film that none of us have seen yet.  That was a very cute movie that we all really liked.  Dominica and I couldn’t get over how much the star of the film looked like a red-headed version of Liesl.  We were just dying with how much alike they were.  Liesl herself moved around the room snuggling first with me, then with her mom and then Emily for a while before coming back and snuggling with me again for the last half of the movie.  She is such a little sweetie.

It was back to the Grices’ and right off to bed after the movie was over. We are driving back up to Dallas as soon as we get up in the morning so we want to get our sleep and get back home.  Francesca and the kids are coming up to spend the week.  Bennie is coming up later in the week and is going to do some work on the house while he is there.

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