When Poppy the Pop-Up popped off

Happy Post Turkey, friends!

Since I will have almost zero relaxation time in the next 3 weeks, I'd better post about my holiday adventures before posting becomes a rarity.

So here goes Thanksgiving 2009

As the story goes, the family was on their way to Thanksgiving feast with the big silver van, (poppy the pop-top) towing Poppy (the pop-up trailer). Now, we have been well aware that it was a possibility for Poppy (the pop-up) to be a bit jealous of the new pop-up family member (Poppy the pop-top). Here we are driving along the freeway when all of the sudden we hear this terrible


terrible

Screeching sound. Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech it went down the freeway.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit we went down the freeway.

And so to avoid an incredibly brutal accident we pulled off the freeway. There we were in our Thanksgiving best, in the turn out lane to a main city street.

Our beloved pop-up trailer had had enough and had attempted to just jump off the trailer hitch. Thankfully the safety chains saved us, becoming quite mangled in the process

Since trailers were not covered on our AAA plan, we called a nice tow man to come get Poppy the Pop-up. He came in a windbreaker suit.

Since we could not tow our pop-up, we had the tow man drop it off at a local U-Haul lot. Why a U-Haul lot? I don't know. My father felt they would not mind discovering a new vehicle on their lot.

So we wrote them a nice note that said something along the lines of :

Hello, you don't know us but you will soon discover
we left you a present. Please try to fix it or call
us in the morning. Er-- Happy Thanksgiving?

And with that, we went to Thanksgiving. We did in fact receive a call in the morning from the U-Haul guys asking us kindly to remove our trailer from their lot.

ACTUAL THANKSGIVING:

We arrived at the Aunt and Uncle's house in the nick of time. Basically as soon as we walked in the door, everyone began scampering for food. We had been asked to prepare a "Kids Jell-O". Now, even though I am semi-offended that we were told to create a dish that involves mixing some powder and water and waiting, my mom and I decided to take it as a challenge. And challenge it turned out to be. You see, we decided to be clever and pour 3 different jello flavors into an assortment of silicon cake molds. The thing no one had informed us it that silicon cake molds are not even similar to jell-o molds. In fact, they pretty much wish you to fail if you wish to use them as such. So our Jell-o masterpiece came out looking like this:

It's sort of artistic in a very ugly way.

I forgot to also mention that in addition for our dreams to have creatively molded jell-o structured, we wanted them to be layered. The layering worked, the molding did not.

Here is my wonderful family post thanksgiving dinner consumption:

Notice my lovely father in the back, how he cocks his head and successfully blocks my mother's entire face. But she's still smiling.

After picture time, my cousins and I made paper fortune tellers. Oh, how I miss elementary school joys. I couldn't quite remember exaclty how the mechanics of playing went, so I made up my own questions and put the answers under the fold. My younger cousins had a good time telling me I was sadly mistaken. I still felt my fortune teller was of quality. Sample question: What is behind you? Sample Answer: 1 lobster.

Creativity: check

Mine is in the center of the picture, the one with the various faces.

Shortly after this picture was taken, I decided that Mr. Nathan Peterson should meet my extended family via Skype. They had never seen such a thing before and had lots of fun rotating themselves in front of the camera, dancing and yelling loudly. I'm not sure Nate actually remembered which was which, but he did get to view the insanity from afar. I really wish I had gotten a screen shot.

FRIDAY: After sleeping in Elyse's dorm room at UCLA, the family went to Cirque du soliel Kooza on the promenade.

I was pleased to discover that it actually takes place inside a giant circus tent.

I quite enjoyed the festivities, especially the part where people wearing very spindly stilts were launched off teeter boards, did several flips in the air and landed standing up.

On the way to dinner, we all had to fit inside the van accompanied by my father's very large surf board. Elyse decided to sit underneath it and traveled in a position something like this:

SATURDAY:I woke up in the morning to discover that over night the world had been covered in a soft blanket of white snow. This was entirely unexpected.

So I got out and logically let my cat explore.

She wanted to come back in.

SUNDAY: oh yes, now is the 9 hour drive back home. So interesting how you lose entire days when you live just far away from your family to drive to them for holidays. Along the tail end of the journey we decided to avoid the ongoing traffic we had been experiencing for the past 8 or so hours and go exploring in Gilmore. It was very pretty and much better than traffic.

Here is me and my other self at the beginning of the trip trying to amuse ourselves during traffic lulls:

For the next three weeks: CONSTANT STUDYING!!!!!!

Expect tiny updates

Starting now:

TUESDAY: Eeek Kineseology final.

To be continued...