Another Family Thanksgiving In Missouri

Enjoying KC's City Market With Our Grandchildren

Browsing A Cool Garden Shop

It's almost 8:00 and Evie is the first one up after me and she is already working with the turkey, even before settling down with here coffee.  What a woman.  It's going to be a nice day here in Lee's Summit, a high in the 40's, mostly clear skies, a day to enjoy the outdoors with a walk, the inside with a great Thanksgiving Day dinner.

Man's Best Friend

Yesterday was surprisingly cool out although we did have some sun.  We were in no hurry to do anything so we sat around, watching TV, having a some breakfast, more or less waiting for young Nick to get up.  I did go for a nice walk, through the development and along the creek again, just a half hour but just what I needed.  I am always in a hurry to get moving, probably because I have been up a couple of hours before anyone else gets up.  So I have to tell myself to relax, breathe, be patient and we will be on our way eventually.  And we were, about noon, after Nick got up, after Tom spent a couple of hours on conference calls and downloading apps for his new computer.

We decided it was a good day to go to the City Market, about a half hour drive into downtown Kansas City.  And though part of the market was closed, the open stalls for vegetables, there were still lots of shops and vegetable shops open, so it was fun.  We browsed the various ethic stores, Middle Eastern, Indian, Italian, and Greek, and sat down for beignet's and coffee at a Cajun joint.

Waiting For Our Beignets

These markets always remind Evie and me of the open markets and shops in Turkey, one of the reasons we love to frequent them.  We did not buy much, some spices, Italian sausage, some candy but it was a fun early afternoon.  We ended up at an old fashion hardware store, still functioning which he have visited before.  It has lots of cool stuff so it was hard to get Evie and Marlena out of there and the Garden store next door.

The Meatball Gourmets

We did not  get home until 3:00, so it was time to get cooking, to get the meatballs and sauce ready for Mary's famous meatballs and spaghetti.  While Evie browned the Italian sausage, Mary made the sauce, basically a chopped onion and garlic, five large cans of tomato paste, double the amount of water, salt and sugar and that's it.  Mary also mixed the 5 lbs. of ground meat with eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs, etc. and she made about 40 meatballs as Marlena browned them in a pan with inch of olive oil.  She browned them perfectly and when all were done, Mary popped them and the Italian sausage into the sauce and let it simmer for a couple of hours.  Meanwhile, Tom and I went off to the hardware store to pick up a new propane tank, some cherry wood for the grill, a aluminum band for catching the drippings from the turkey and buttermilk for pancakes.

Laser Lit Home

And once we returned home, it was getting dark so we set up two laser Christmas lights in their front yard which illuminate their entire front of the house.  They are so easy to set up, just stake them into the ground, focus them on the house, plug them in and you have a  cool, laser lit house.

Spaghetti And Meatball Dinner (photo by Marlena)

Around 6:30, we sat down to a grand spaghetti dinner, with salad and bread but all we seemed to want was pasta and meatballs.  It was a perfect dinner because it's what we wanted and made us wonder why we ever go out to eat.  To give the cooks a break I guess.  One of Nick's good buddies, Peyton, came over to say hi because he and another friend, Chris, had spent a week with us this past June.

A Long Legged Beauty

After dinner, I could hardly make it over to the couch I was so full of dinner.  And as always, we searched the various movie channels for an appropriate film and settled on a movie both Evie and I like and have seen a couple of times, WHAT ABOUT BOB.  Ir was a good choice, no violence or sex, just one hilarious situation after another.  Everyone enjoyed it.  We then watched an episode of Property Brothers before going up to bed around 10:30, another full day.