Thanksgiving

Ashley and I love turkey.  Every year we look forward to getting a big one and having lots of good times and left overs.  This Thanksgiving, we had some friends Abee, Marianella, and Abbey over for a nice family style sit down meal.  It was nice to have everyone over again this year as we all were all far from our home and it was a good year to celebrate.  They had all finished school at Georgia Tech.  Yup, my huney is graduating and she got awesome grades to boot.  I’ll talk about that more in December when we have the graduation ceremony.

So, back to Thanksgiving… we got a 19 pound turkey, made stuffing following my Mom’s receipe, had mash potatoes, corn, green beans, candied yams, croissants and even a sweet potato pie.  Even Poke and Cappy had some turkey.  These dogs stuffed themselves silly and were uncharacteristically calm and sleepy after the meal.

Here’s some photos from that night and of course some photos of the food!


My share of the feast.


Stuffed turkey is the only way to go!


It’s all about forearm strength and winning smile…


Ash in her cute apron.  We got the Apron from Nawleans when we went down for the sugar bowl.  In the background is one of my favorite paintings that Ash made.  She’s so such an artists!


An now, the group shot.  We didn’t get one as a group last year but this year thanks for an auto-timer and a make shift tripod made from cans of Coke we got it in after a few tries.  The bloopers of me frantically running to join the group are rally funny.

Chattanooga Day Trip: Ruby Falls

Today we took a day trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Ash and I have alway wanted to check it out being that it’s been talked about as an up and coming city.  So with Bean visiting we thought Chattanooga would be a good candidate for a day trip.  We headed out around 9:30 am.  Of course before we left, Bean had to pose a picture with the local mid town princess.

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The drive from Atlanta was short, only about 1 hr 45 min.  Our first stop was Ruby Falls, a subterrainean mile-long caveren that lead to a 145 underground waterfall.

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Ruby Falls is named after the wife of the explorer who found this underground cavern.  The caveren sits bellow the Look Out Mountain which overlooks the city of Cattanooga.  Above the cavern is the castle which was built out of the rock displaced by the dig to the cavern.

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The walk through the underground cavern (above) was a very cool experience.  Almost a mile long, the tunnel is about two person shoulder width wide.  The climate is always a cool 60 degrees and we had to take a elevator deep into the heart of the mountain to access the cavern.

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We walked with a guide and saw numerous crevaces and undergroound pools of water giving us the feeling like we were ouselves exploring this underground world.  At te end of the mile trek, we entered a large domed open area all natrually ocurring.  The guide purposely dimmed the lights and all we could see what was the dim glow of green flood lights and the  louding crashing of water.  The feeling was similar to Lord of the Rings when the fellowship walked into the city of the dwarves.  In fact, Bean and I made a few jokes about it as we walked through the cavern.

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Then with a creshendow of music, the lights illuminated showing a vast catheral like area with a huge water fall.  The site was very awesome to see and the crowd gasped and clapped!  I tried my best to capture the waterfall but the two below the about the best I could do.

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The water hollowed out the dome area that Ruby Falls is located; this area is sometimes referred to as “Solomon’s Temple”. By way of erosion the waterfall carved out this area. The progress of this natural process can be observed by studying the smooth sides of the limestone walls.

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Before we left Ruby falls, I took a nice pic of a Christmas tree ornament in the lobby of the castle.  I am quite pleased with how it came out! 🙂

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Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!  Ash and I are having a really relaxing time finally being able to rest after a very fast and furious year.  Pok’e’s  nap photo captures out Christmas sentiment best!

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Our Thanksgiving Feast

Ashley and I celebrated our first Thanksgiving here in Atlanta with a feast my mom would be proud of. The spread was a 19 lb turkey with Mrs. Peng’s classic stuffing and gravy, onion and garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, candied yams, biscuits, corn and a dessert of apple and strawberry rhubarb pie.

We invited a few of Ashley’s master’s program classmates over, Marienella, Abby and Abhi. We had a great time and everyone enjoyed the food. Here’s some pictures of our feast.
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By the way, Thanksgiving also happens to be Cappy’s birthday, he turns 4 this year and this is his third thanksgiving with us. He got some turkey too!

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