A glass of red wine, my laptop, and my camera are my companions as my husband does the dishes to clean up from the long weekend (yes, he's a rare find, isn't he? I'll keep him!). SmallBoy sits on my left snarfing down some pasta before getting back into the groove of a school night, while I sit reflecting on the long weekend.
For us, it was also a birthday weekend (mine, but I wasn't really marking the passing of time - are you buying that?). We had begun our holiday weekend by baking pumpkin pie, from scratch. 
Not just homemade crust and a can of pumpkin, but straight from the pumpkin. The recipe called for creating a pumpkin puree from the meat of the pumpkin after gutting, cleaning, and baking the pumpkin. Ok, easy enough, right? No. Our blender blew out, so we puree'd by hand - with the potato masher. It took a long time, killed my carpal tunnel, but let me tell you, I will NEVER look at other pumpkin pie quite the same way. This was well worth the effort and, well, the love that went into it. Girl dubbed this Love Pie, not because of the heart shaped pan, but because we made it with love, by hand, and with no technology except the oven used to bake it.
A word to the wise, though: if you want to make this pie, there are special pie pumpkins - sugar pumpkins. They are much sweeter than your typical Jack-O-Lantern pumpkin. They are also considerably more difficult to open than a Jack-O-Lantern pumpkin, as their skin is much thicker. We tried to use the knives that we use for carving at Halloween, but were unsuccessful. You will need a really good knife - or small saw - in order to cut open these pumpkins.
We spent Thanksgiving at my in-laws, surrounded by family, and my mother and sister. We dubbed the day, "Excessive Food Consumption Day," and determined that more than the given amount of time off is necessary to recover.
The following day was my birthday and my sisters and husband had conspired to get tickets to Blue Man Group. 
The six of us, my sister and my husband's twin brother, my youngest sister and her boyfriend, and PC & I, headed down to the Briar Street Theater, stopping at The Elephant & Castle for a very satisfying dinner. The menu was entirely too delectable to make an decision, so the twins had the Yorkshire Pudding, while the rest of us defaulted to the Fish & Chips - except my youngest sis, she was smart and had the Bruchetta Chicken Sandwich.
My lovely family serenaded me several times at the restaurant with rousing versions of happy birthday (that's what happens in a musical family), so much so, that the staff brought us this chocolate soaked brownie and ice cream dessert, in a bowl decorated with swirls of chocolate sauce and "Happy Birthday" written in chocolate (normally about $8.95 on the menu - they comped us!).
We finally left the restaurant before we were too full to walk back to the blue line to transfer to the Red Line to head north to the theater. As we stood on the platform, my family, once again, broke into song. This time, they convinced the el platform performers to sing also. What a riot! Just the trip before the show was fun and exciting.
Thankfully, my family was slow enough to bring my birthday to the attention of the production crew of Blue Man Group, that I was safe. The crew, in order to work a greeting or birthday wish from the audience, in to the pre-show festivities, they need to know in advance! HA! I was safe.
My sister, KR, had secured us fantastic seats. We were very close, but two rows into the safe, non-plastic, non-splatter zone. I was a bit worried that we may not be too safe from being audience "volunteers," but, really, no one in the crowd is safe from that. When the blue men came out into the audience, thankfully, they passed us all over for other willing "volunteers." In one skit, the "men" had recruited a woman into the group and each of them were trying to impress her with a gift. One gave her flowers, another something else, and another a gelatinous glob which looked like canned cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving dinner.
The blue man on the end took exception to this gelatinous glob and chose to catapult it off of the table, and the stage - right into KR's lap. 
We didn't get messy or splattered or stained, but we did get a gelatinous glob. It was a tad to awkward for KR to bring back home to Kentucky in her luggage, so it now sits on my kitchen table with my centerpiece made from the bottom shell of one of the pumpkin pie pumpkins.
Two days later, the glob is starting to disintegrate, kind of like gelatin does after it has been removed from the mold for a while, but it is remarkably still cold.
We had such a delightful time this weekend that I'm having an even bigger case of the Sunday Night Blues. I'm not ready for things to return to normal and am dreading the fact that Christmas is not a "day after" holiday.
Well, time to get the SmallBoy ready for school and ready for bed. My husband is finally relaxing after cleaning up after the gigantic mess made today and I'm ready to top off my wine and go snuggle in next to him.
More to follow on today's festivities: Tree trimming, family, and autism - all wrapped up into one neat little package.
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