Happy Thanksgiving, now dame un beso.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving here in Spain. We missed being home for the big family gatherings but luckily we had a gathering of good friends here in Utrera. John's parents, sister and brother-in-law invited us over to their house for Thanksgiving along with John and Maria, Ryan and Luisana (our friends - Mike works with Ryan) and a few other relatives. We had a big crowd and plenty of food. The food was so good! John's dad is American and their family lived in the States for 25 years, so they know how to make a good Thanksgiving dinner. We had turkey, ham, homemade mashed potatoes and stuffing, salad, corn, yams and plenty of pie for dessert. Speaking of pie, I made my own pumpkin and apple pie for the occasion. I had never tried the apple pie recipe before and it was SO good. I am addicted. If you want the recipe, just go to my favorite website: allrecipes.com and type in Apple Pie by Grandma Ople. Be sure to follow the advice in the comments too. YUM! I even made homemade pie crust with half butter and half crisco. The crust certainly didn't look perfect, but it tasted wonderful. Jay had a great time eating turkey and stuffing. He couldn't get enough of it! He also had his fair share of mom's pie. He had a great time crawling up and down the stairs with his friend Christopher and playing peek-a-boo with Johnny. Mike and John even played a little football outside. Maria was baffled, wondering what was so great about throwing an odd-shaped ball back and forth. Speaking of football... we're so excited for the BYU vs. Utah football game on Saturday! Go Cougs! Beat your opponents... soundly!
As far as besos go, Jay will now give me a kiss when I say, "Dame un beso!" Only when he's in the mood though. It's so cute when he does it. Still no words of his own. In other news, our basement flooded the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It doesn't rain much in Utrera, but when it does, it seriously pours for 24 hours straight. This isn't so good on Spanish construction. Water seeped through a small hole in the wall (yes, in the concrete wall) and covered our basement floor with 1/2 inch of water. We store all of our extra things down there, so we weren't too happy about this. We spent much of our Thanksgiving cleaning up and putting all our stuff up on crates. We're determined we'll be ready next time this happens, although our landlord just says, "Oh, you don't need to put your things up on crates. There's no way this will happen again." Okay. Of course we found out it happened only a year ago to the people living in the house before us, but it won't happen again. Such an Andalucian way of thinking. Don't worry, be happy :) It does make them very friendly people, we just don't want our things ruined. Anyway, all is taken care of now and we're packing up in preparation for our move to Germany. Jay and I will be home alone for about 3 weeks since Mike is heading up before us. That, will be interesting. I hope my patience lasts! I love my little boy so so so much, but sometimes the whining gets irritating. When will he be able to just tell me what he wants? I doubt that will stop the whining, but it might help. I'm sure he's wishing he could talk too. We'll have lots of fun together while daddy's gone doing things we shouldn't like watching Baby Einstein 6 times a day and eating apple pie for dinner. Alright. I better be off. The laundry is calling and Jay will be waking up soon! Oh and sorry my blog entries haven't been as frequent lately. I'm trying to get Christmas gifts ready before we leave for Germany and it's taking up all my free time during Jay's naps. I'll try to keep it updated.