Needless to say, everyone stuffed their faces but barely made a dent in all the food. So everyone also did a good job taking lots of leftovers home.

Turkey turned out pretty well. I brined it for a day before roasting. And I also used the techniques Alton Brown recommends in order to keep the breasts moist while still making sure the thighs cook through.

Here’s Bonnie’s “turkey.”

Here’s a picture with the grandparents before we left.

Amanda fell asleep during the trick or treat walk:

Phyliss’ salad with carmelized “brains”:

And her eye-meatball sandwiches:

Plus stromboli (can’t remember what the scary name was):

She also made a really good french onion soup and had punch and dip. That plus all the desserts everyone brought made for quite the feast. We brought a pumpkin cake that I forgot to take a picture of. I did a bad job with the frosting so it wasn’t all that pretty anyway. It did have a Hoho stem that was pretty funny though… till Terry broke it off and ate it.

I’ll have to get some pictures from the other folks who were there. I’m getting worse at photographing everything… need another set of hands to take pictures while holding babies.

Ashley and Amanda will eventually end up in the cribs.

We also checked out farmer’s market #3 today. (#1 is the one off I-280 at Alemany and #2 is the one behind Target at Serramonte.) This one is behind Macy’s at Stonestown Mall and is probably our favorite due to the proximity and the variety of stuff. Alemany is still the king, but it’s harder to get to and too hard to park. In any case, we were happy with a lot of the food vendors at this new one. We tried some hard cheeses and ended up buying their vanilla bean cream cheese. I also tried some goat cheese from Healdsburg which was tasty but Bonnie wasn’t a big fan. There was also an olive guy who had some interesting stuff. I ended up with a small container of olives stuffed with cream cheese marinated in balsamic vinegar and fig reduction. Super tasty! We got Alissa kettle corn as we always do (she calls it copcorn) which she ate while walking around listening to the guitarist that was there. He even played her the rubber ducky song. And lastly, I ended up with a $1 Samosa (I thought it was fresh… it wasn’t, but for $1, can’t go wrong) while Bonnie got a really tasty Belgian waffle. Anyway, we were there for less than an hour, bought no produce, and yet somehow ended up spending nearly $20.

While Alissa eats a piece of pizza.

And daddy got a little bit of project work done:

It’s the front panel to a DAC (digital to analog converter.)

… to riches

We visited Jef, Xiao Yi, and Gavin this weekend at their beautiful new place in Burlingame. Xiao Yi made a fantastic dinner as always. Beef noodle soup and onion pancakes. Very Taiwanese. And very tasty. Afterwards, we went for a short walk.

Alissa is getting faster and faster.

And she likes to push rather than ride in her stroller.

(I had to make her walk in the grass because the road was too steep and she would certainly have face planted on the way down.)

Gavin is so much bigger than last time we saw him.

And finally, here’s a random pic of Amanda.

We did Kit Kat bars along side bubbles for the kids and twin lady bug magnets for every family instead of the Trades Joe’s chocolate bars this time around. (Happy to offer these up for sale similar to how we did the ones for Alissa for those of you who are interested.)

My mom was able to make it out this time.

These are the four pictures we used in a big frame.

Otherwise, we feel very lucky that so many of our friends and family were able to make it out. Too bad it’s impossible to spend as much time as we would like with everyone, but hopefully, we’ll be able to see folks a little more often now that the twins are a little bit older.

I’d write more, but we’re all pretty pooped out. Here’s the rest of the pictures: http://flickr.com/gp/jasonwang/106988

So, as life imitates art, here are our dumplings plus actual dumplings that I pan fried up for dinner the other night. Mmm… dumplings two ways.

Here’s my attempt at making the pizza look bigger than it actually was:

Here’s Alissa enjoying my chicken cacciatore:

The Elmo and Big Bird cake from Lucky:

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d put a short list of things we’re thankful for this year.
1. First and foremost, we’re thankful that we’re healthy and that Alissa (and the twins) are developing just fine. Along those lines, our ultrasound appointment yesterday revealed that Bonnie’s bedrest is working very well so that makes us feel less nervous about pre-term labor.

2. Especially in these economic times, we’re thankful that I still have a good job that I like and is flexible enough to allow me to spend time with my (growing) family.

3. Finally, I’m thankful that we have such a strong support group of family and friends to share all of our experiences with.

I’ll close with a picture of Alissa from last year:

Next year, Thanksgiving will be very different with an almost three year old and two nine month olds at our feet. Ai-ya!

EDIT: More pictures from Thanksgiving day.

Alissa spent some time chasing and making bubbles:

At Bonnie’s cousins’ house, it seems the kids will soon outnumber the adults: