Fall and Thanksgiving 2008

We enjoyed a nice warm fall, hiking at Argyle Lake.

At the annual Bark in the Park, to raise money for our Humane Society, Gracie was entered into the costume contests.  She won second place for her 1920's Flapper costume and she also won 2nd place with Nathan in the Look-A-Like contest.  Next year we will enter her in the pet trick contest.  

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Nathan and I traveled to St. Louis to see Jason Mraz in concert at the Fox Theater.  This was our first time seeing him in concert and we had a wonderful time.  He is such a lyrical genius and he can rhyme and sing the strangest things so fast, it is such a good time watching him perform.  Lisa Hannigan opened for him, she is an Irish singer/songwriter (considered folk or Indie music) that used to do backup singing with Damien Rice.  She is absolutely amazing as well, and I would definitely recommend looking her up on i-tunes to sample her music.   The Fox theater is absolutely gorgeous, and we were kicking ourselves because we did not bring the camera along.  I assumed that cameras were still banned at concerts... they definitely were when I first started going to them in high school.  However, I guess now they figure it is better publicity for themselves when their fans to take photos and post them online.  So, we had no camera to catch the magic of the night, but we do have some distorted snippets of songs that we recorded on our cell phone!  

We visited the St. Louis Art museum that weekend as well.  We took an I-pod guided tour through this awesome traveling exhibit called "Action/Abstraction: Pollock, de Kooning, and American Art".  They had several Jackson Pollock paintings that were awe inspiring. Previously I didn't have much regard for Pollock's work.  In books and online sources they just look like a bunch of paint drippings.  However, when you are standing in front of it, you can see all the textures and layers, and other materials that he slips in with the paint.  They really do come alive when you are standing right in front of them.  

Since we took this little trip before Thanksgiving, we decided it would be best if we then stayed home for the holiday and not spend anymore money traveling.  So we invited our families up to have dinner with us.  Unfortunately my parents could not come, they had a concert of their own to go to the following weekend.  But we did enjoy hosting the big feast with Nathan's mom and brother.  This was the first time we had cooked the whole meal.  Nathan was in charge of the turkey and I was in charge of everything else.  I do say,  besides the homemade gravy that I attempted, all else was very successful!  I had a lot of fun playing hostess and decorating the house with pretty fall things.  We had a nice tablecloth, place mats, and cloth napkins even.  It was so nice to have company and spend the holiday in our own home.  Actually it was nice to have a decent home to have a holiday in... this is the first time that has happened!  

It was also nice to have help putting up the Christmas lights the day after Thanksgiving. Nathan's brother claims to be a master at that, so I let him!  Last year it took me so long to do it, they were barely up before we had to take them back down.