too pooped to pop

...
Uh, today... where did it ago? Another day of too much activity and I'm exhausted at 8PM!

OK, so today, did some grocery shopping and as far as I know right now, I will not have to shop tomorrow (a great thing), becauase I got everything we need for dinner on Thursday.

This afternoon I put 3 racks of ribs on the grill on low heat for an hour, and then wrapped them in foil to finish baking until dinner -- "the meat falls off the bone!" They were very well-received by everyone, even DS2 was eating the meat off the bone all by himself. The meal was rounded out with coleslaw and my baby corn bread, and everyone really liked everything. I'm stuffed, but with good food so that's OK.

I also got started on my fruitcake. I found the original recipe from Alton Brown and decided to add back in smaller amounts of fruits that were included there: golden raisins, currants (actually I'm using prunes), dried apricots, and ginger. I chopped the fresh ginger then cooked it for a few minutes in sf vanilla syrup to make it sweet -- I really think fruitcake needs that ginger "bite".

So now we're relaxing for a few minutes and we'll soon get the kids into bed. I need to get the fruitcakes in the oven and I also need to bake bread for the stuffing, but I think I'll just do that tomorrow, and concentrate on getting the fruitcakes done tonight.

We've rented "Pirates of the Caribbean" to watch tonight, too -- I'm psyched to finally get to see it! I can't believe I didn't get to see it in the theater . Life is too busy sometimes.

The psycho family situation continues. Various people have tried to intervene with my insane sibling, to no avail. It's sad but none of us needs this additional stress, so if this sibling decides that an Ex is more important than actual family, that's just a bad decision, and the rest of us are trying to remain calm about it.

If that were not happening, I would be perfectly content, in spite of being tired. I'm not feeling stressed right now, as the stuff to be done is quite manageable, especially with Nana and Papa here. It's wonderful how much time they spend with the kids -- it's great to get them away from the tv and computers! I do keep praying that everyone else can find some peace, too, and have a happy Christmas!