Every year I enjoy the Jacquie Lawson advent calendar. A neighbor always sends it to me as a gift, and I get hours of enjoyment out of playing the games.



Mr. TroutBend decided to come here from Las Vegas for about a week, arrived Monday night. It's nice to see him, and he brought some gifts that he received from the casino - battery-powered candles, some nice mugs, and a sort of blanket wrap that's pink, teal, and ivory plaid. We had a nice conversation about money, which is hard to do via email or cell phone.

I've been married to this man for 42 years, and still learning things about him, but some of it is because he's changed his mind about things. Today I found out that he doesn't hate whole berry cranberry sauce. For years he insisted we had to have the plain jellied kind, served just as dumped from the can - as opposed to cutting out stars or hearts. Now, the sky's the limit because we can have any form of cranberries I want to dump in a dish and stick a spoon in.

Around Thanksgiving time, I bought a 20 pound turkey because that was the cheapest, and thawed it out for this holiday because he's here to cook for. It's so huge I broke it in half, and am cooking the meat in various ways, trying out new recipes. Tomorrow we'll have a classic turkey dinner. And I'm baking lots of pies to hand out as gifts.

I'm going to make this pecan pie recipe that doesn't call for any kind of syrup.



If I was Santa, this is how I'd look - crazy and fat. It looks like he's either enjoying the ride or too drunk to be scared.