Friday bullets, Nov. 17, 17

We are now less than a week from Thanksgiving. I have no idea how that happened. I also have no idea if we will be ready. Oh, I know we probably will, but it sure doesn't feel like it at this moment.

• In Thanksgiving-related news, look what I bought.

This is a turkey roaster. This is also a turkey roaster which will cook a 20+ pound turkey. I have been struggling with having only one oven. (I know, first world problem.) But when you have had two ovens for so very long, you get kind of used to it. I am still not used to having just one. And then when I try to figure out how to make Thanksgiving happen for 24 people, I couldn't. My parents always cooked a turkey in a roaster because of the one oven issue, so I decided that is what we will do as well. Plus, it can function as a very large slow-cooker, which is not a bad thing around here.

• I also need to pull the turkeys out of the freezer today, and probably changing the setting on our second refrigerator should be in order as well. All last week, we had frozen poultry issues. The first time happened when I discovered right before dinner, that the chicken I thought was in the refrigerator had been put away by some helpful child in the freezer instead. It was rock hard. We ate late that night. Then the next night, when I went to get the whole chickens I had pulled out of the freezer to thaw four days earlier, I discovered that they were pretty well frozen as well. This makes me nervous about a 10 pound and a 21 pound turkey.
• Olive turned six months old this past week. She is a very good puppy, though while she acts like a puppy, she is 60 pounds, so it is difficult to remember she is a puppy sometimes.
• Nefertiti still loves boxes and seems to have some sort of box radar. The second there is a box lying around, she is in it.

• One of my children's new favorite things is to joke about how they can now say, yes, indeed, they were raised in a barn. 
• I love family dinners where people linger at the table because they are all enjoying an interesting discussion. The question being debated last night was, if you could pick any of the wonders of the world (ancient [assuming you could time-travel for some of them], modern, and natural], which seven would you pick? I decided on: The hanging gardens of Babylon, the pyramids, Petra, the Taj Mahal, the Christ the Redeemer stature in Rio de Jenero (and thus sneakily giving myself 8 since the Rio de Jenero bay is also on the list), Macchu Picchu, and Victoria Falls. I've already been to the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall, so didn't have to factor those in. What would yours be?
• While I have cut out L.'s new dress, I haven't yet begun to put it together. This is because I was suddenly overcome with the need to make these:

They are little crocheted fall leaves. No, I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. If you go to Attic 24 (my all-time favorite crochet blog) you will see that she also has patterns for oak leaves and little acorns as well. I will be making these next. I'm now pretty speedy at the beech leaves you see in the picture. The first one took a while, because it had been two years since I had picked up a crochet hook, and kind of had to teach myself to crochet all over again.

• I always feel ridiculously self-serving and odd to mention this, but the film-maker who is working on a documentary about our family is now in the fund-raising stage of things. You can go to the Facebook page (Hayden and Her Family Facebook) or you can view the trailer (Hayden and Her Family trailer) if you are curious.
• I try to make it a point to tell my children things on a need-to-know basis. This usually works because first, I am not hounded to death with questions beforehand, and second, if something happens to be cancelled, we all avoid huge bouts of disappointment. This doesn't work so well, if you have trouble remembering things. The hounding questions to have the purpose of keeping things in the forefront of one's mind. Take yesterday for instance. I had dropped P. off at the stable, and had headed to the store for exciting purchases such as toothpaste and soap. I was planning what I would do when I got home. (Making little crocheted oak leaves was right up there at the top.) When I suddenly realized that I had signed up the four elementary people for a free five week art class at a local studio. There was a brief moment of panic as I thought through was time the class was and what time it currently was, and happily noted I had not missed it, but it certainly did change my plans. And boy, were the four going to the class surprised when I walked in and informed them that we needed to leave in less than an hour because they had a class I had forgotten to mention to them. They loved it, by the way.
• D. has taken an interest in philosophy, theoretical physics, and astronomy. I'm afraid I am a disappointment to him, as the ideas pondered in theoretical physics make my head hurt to even begin to think about them, much less try to discuss them with a 14 year old. His reading list at the moment makes mine look as though I read tabloid magazines in comparison. 
• Q. has not laid another egg so far. But every time she makes a noise even slightly different from what people are hearing, many children run to go and stare at her.
• At the grocery store where I shop, they cater to a large Hispanic population. As a result, for the past several weeks, there have been the most wondrous super large pots on display. I thought at first they were just really big (as in 40 quarts big) soup pots. On closer examination, I realized, that while you could use them for soup, they had steamer inserts in the bottom to steam tamales. I could buy a pot that steams 120 tamales at once. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to come up with reasons why I do not need this pot. No, I have no idea where I would store it. Once I solve that little difficulty, well...