November16th, there was a Family Fun Night at my Lila's school. We all walked over there, it was five dollars for one slice of pizza, one small bottle of water, and a bingo card. My two daughters and I went. We got our pizza, water, and card, found a seat. We saw a few people we knew from DM and Lila saw one from class. They had a bunch of baskets to raffle and they were five dollars for an arms length of tickets. I spent 10 dollars and dropped my tickets in a whatever looked good. Then we started to play bingo, the game was fun and winners got to pick a board game from their LARGE stack on the stage. We didn't win a single game but Lila had fun and that is all that counted. After the game was over they started selling full pizzas for $3 to get rid of what they had left. I went up and with my last $6 bought the last two pizzas. Then they started pulling numbers for the raffle baskets. That was were our luck started, I won one, two, three.. FOUR baskets!!
The first is a movie night basket, which was a $25 gift card for AMC, a coupon for a free appetizer at Applebees, five boxes of movie candy and a large bag of plain popcorn in a nice red bowl.
My second basket was a tupperware basket with a tupperware pitcher, cookbook, and two orange peelers
My third basket was a dessert basket, three pie crust tins, three pie fillings (Chocolate Creme, Key Lime, and Banana Cream), two boxes of cake/brownie mix, two cans evaporated milk, two bottles of oil, a small jar of cherries, and two icing all in a nice blue basket.
My last basket was a thanksgiving basket and with not having any real money I was very thankful for this basket as it had thanksgiving staples in it. This basket had gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, oil, olives and I can't even remember what.
I stood in the back of the room with my four baskets and two pizzas and looked at my girls and tried to figure out how to get it home (Eric had the car at work). Raven picked the dessert basket to carry, Lila picked the movie basket, I stacked the pizza boxes on top of the thanksgiving basket and Raven picked up the pitcher and we proceeded to walk home. It isn't a long walk but it was long enough to make me think I wasn't gonna make it with all my baskets. My forearms were on fire and had gotten to the point of going numb by the time I actually got to our apartment. (this is one of those times I told myself, God wouldn't have given me all these gifts if I was not capable of getting them home) Once I was home with the baskets the girls and I stood and drank in our luck.
November 17th, we decided to treat the girls and took them to the hibachi grill buffet. Saturday lunch is the best price and we all love the time together. After that, I took the girls to the church bazaar up the street. I spent a bit of money on a few necklaces, a few raffle tickets for two different sections. A third section had the gift baskets like family fun night but there was 52 baskets instead of 10 and over 300 entries. We didn't really need any more baskets but since it helped the church raise money I did it anyways. The only basket I really wanted was the wheelbarrow full with 30 bottles of alcohol. LOL. But I didn't win. I did hear two familiar names called out though. The basket Lila really wanted was won by one of our DM mothers and the basket Raven really wanted was won by my Aunt. Funny how things turn out sometimes. LOL. We didn't exactly get out of there with no wins though. There was one game that you bough tickets and opened them to reveal numbers and if your number matched the number on the prize you won that prize. The girls walked past and saw a batman skateboard. Neither knows or ever have ridden a skateboard but they both really wanted for totally different reasons. So I spent a dollar for three tickets for Lila and another dollar for Raven. I had the change from the five and then I was like, my turn so gave up another dollar. We won nothing. I looked at my two dollars and my two girls and gave them both another one. Lila pulled all her tickets and won nothing. Raven pulled her six tickets, one, two... and reaching for a third got two so instead of pulling them apart she just dropped it and grabbed another. That third ticket turned out to the the number for the skateboard. Since her Dad's nickname is Batman, she was super excited...
We left there feeling very happy with our weekend winnings.
November 18th, I got an extra text that I had almost $200 in food stamps added to my account, I can only assume its the governments way of helping for the holidays. So we went shopping! First to the Walmart for a pan for the turkey, and a few other things, then to the grocery store for our food for the week and some thanksgiving staples, then to the wine and spirits store for some Alcohol. Sometimes Eric is such a girl, he couldn't decide on what he wanted. I took like 5 minutes, and then we stood in the corner for like half an hour while he thought and thought. Back to the van after than and then to the Popeye's for dinner since it was really too late to cook at that point.
November 19 - 21, all we did is work and school and nothing bad or good to report they were just normal days.
November 22, Thanksgiving - I started the day with thanking people in facebook posts and I did that all day. Whenever I stopped for a minute or thought about it, I thanked another person in my life for something. We had a full day ahead of us and Lila and I started cooking. We had a list of what we needed to do that day.
- Deviled eggs
- Cucumber salad
- Apple Snicker Salad
- Veggie Dip
- White Bean Dip
- Pie
- Cream Cheese puffs
- Turkey
- Stuffing
- Gravy
- Mashed Potatoes
Then we made veggie dip which is just a Knorr Veggie mix and 16oz sour cream
White bean dip:
- 1 can white beans, mashed.
- 1/4 cup yogurt
- 1/4 milk
- 1/2 lemon, squeezed
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp garlic powder
- salt and pepper
Cucumber salad was up next
- 2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced
- 8 oz sour cream
- 1 green onion
- 1 tsp dill weed
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
Then our Apple Snicker Salad
- 3 apples, green is what we picked
- 3 regular sized snickers, frozen
- 8 oz cool whip
Then the deviled eggs, this recipe is for six eggs and I cooked 23 so I just timed by four.
- 1/4 cup mayo
- 1 tsp mustard
Then I made the cream cheese puffs
- Cresent rolls
- Chive cream cheese
Once that was done Lila and I relaxed, Raven woke up and cleaned the kitchen and Eric started on the turkey. He also cooked the potatoes, stuffing and gravy done the turkey was done. I am not sure what time we ate but it was late. Afterwards, relaxing and checking my facebook, I got word that a very good friend finally succumbed to the cancer that was killing him that morning. He was diagnosed a few weeks ago with the most aggressive type of cancer. He was only 26. Raven happened to be sitting next to me looking at all the thanksgiving comments and saw the post and broke down in tears for about 10 mins. Lila was confused, she read the post but couldnt understand why Raven was crying and I couldn't tell her. Eric had to explain what RIP meant but Lila didn't really know him. Raven called him Uncle. For four days I prayed it was a joke. Monday was the day I finally accepted that he was gone and it was not a joke. I still get schoolfeed updates from his facebook page which is really weird and makes it hard to accept he is gone. It also brings back when Suzy died at age 26 in 1996 and makes me hate 26yrs old. Its hard to be positive when your heart is sad but I am trying. I mostly feel bad for all the people who were really close to him. I worry for their sanity and their grief. Ziva said it best I think last night on NCIS, "You don't get over, you only get through"
TTFN
