A New Mini Ipad, P.F. Changs, And A Mavericks Hockey Game

Making Cheesecake with Mr. Happy

It's 7:00, clear skies but warmer,  around 28º at the moment, a perfect day for Thanksgiving, lots of eating, drinking, watching football, and taking a walk but the best part, being together with family, all the threads of matching DNA that come together on this day:  Moms, Dads, children, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews, the ties that bind,

Yesterday began early for Nick, b-ball practice from 8:00-9:30.  The rest of us arose at our leisure, to another cold morning.  Evie was up first, to get the brine ready for the turkey, let it sit for six hours. When Nick got home, we had a real breakfast, at Tom's request, bacon, with eggs on toast. After breakfast, Tom and Mary went to work out, so Evie and Marlena started to put together the chocolate peanut butter cheese cake, quite a effort.  When Tom and Mary returned, they both helped put the finishing touches on the cheesecake before putting it in the freezer until Thanksgiving.  Yum.

Then the fun began.  Tom was checking to see if the new Ipad was available at any of the local Apple stores and amazingly, he found one at the Kansas City Plaza Apple store. He could order it on-line, pick it up later in the day but it meant Evie had to make decisions: buy it now or later, gray or silver, 16 or 32 gigabytes, cover or no cover, cellular or not, if so, Verizon or AT&T, twenty dollar plan or thirty dollar plan.  Decisions!  Finally, after much anguish and soul searching, Evie bit the bullet, told Tom to buy, and with one click of the computer, my credit card bill was appreciably larger.

Nick and Good Friend, Hannah, at Apple Store

The rest of the late morning and early afternoon was, for Evie,  like a kid waiting for Christmas to come, until we all piled in the car, picked up Nick's friend Hannah, and sped down to the Plaza, parking across the street from the Apple store, a half hour ride.  Evie immediately walked in the store,  found a Apple associate and within minutes, she had a gleaming new Mini Ipad in her hands.  Beautiful packaging of course as well as Ipad.  For the next half hour, the associate patiently helped her to set up her Ipad, answer any questions, and transfer all her aps and pictures from her Ipad II.  While this was being done, Tom had an appointment with the Genius Bar, as he was having trouble with his Iphone email, something that they eventually could not solve and sent him to a Apple phone number, to see if an expert could help.  They couldn't  either, alas, so he may have to erase the storage memory and start again, something like that.

Dinner at P. F. Changs

We then did some shopping and walking around, just enjoying being outside in the amazing Plaza, with its Spanish architecture.  Nick picked up some jeans at Lucky's, Tom some shoes at Cole Hahn before we all became hungry and went to P. F. Chang's for an early dinner.  We started with the delicious lettuce rolls, then ordered various entrees for dinner, all great.  We left around 5:30, full and happy and drove off to the Independence Events Center, for a hockey game with the minor league Mavericks.  But the real reason for our attending was that Marlena's fifth and sixth grade choir sang the National Anthem, before the game, huddled in a corner of the ice rink.  It was cool and they were great.

Marlena, Far Left, Singing the National Anthem

Marlena and Girl Friends, at Hockey Arena

We then sat through two quarters of hockey, mildly interested,  as the game, at various times, was stopped so that fans could play silly games on the ice or screen and win prizes.  I guess hockey or basketball, or whatever is not enough any more to keep fans' interest.  And we did not realize there were eighteen minute breaks between the periods, so we left after the second period, skipping the third and final one.  No one was unhappy to leave.  We got home around 10:00, after stopping at HyVee for some last minute items for our Thanksgiving dinner.  Evie made Nick a croque monsieur (grilled cheese), the rest of us had tostitos and hummus, with beers and we then watched the Cavs lose to the Heat, on DVR, before going to bed around 11:00.  A good day, a really good day for Evie.

Today, I have a few goals , all achievable: take a hike with Marlena and Evie, lay off the appetizers, limit TV, enjoy the family and Thanksgiving dinner, and end the day with a turkey sandwich, on white bread with mayo.