Still the Best

One of these years I'm going to post here a few days after Thanksgiving and begin the post, "Well, that was...okay."

This is not that year.

Would you look at that mostly-smiling collection of tryptophan-stuffed beauties? (Yes, I almost wrote tryptophan-stuffed turkeys, but that was too obvious even for me.) They are beautiful, and if our newlyweds had not blown all their vacation days on a honeymoon in Portugal we would have had almost all of my dad's descendants here. I don't understand why Boy#2 and Lovely Girl#2 would choose to have a few days of privacy and quiet in an Iberian paradise rather than a raucous, carb-loaded day in Kansas, but I guess to each their own.

If you count carefully, you'll see that there are 39 human beings in this photo who are related to each other. You will count three times and say to yourself "MomQueenBee, there are only 38 humans there," but you will be wrong because my photo-averse brother-in-law managed to be in the picture while revealing only his legs. Well  played,  photo-averse brother-in-law.

This photo also doesn't include the seven friends I managed to coerce into joining us--I love this day and these people so much that I can't help but herd everyone I know toward the church fellowship hall where our celebration now happens. There's plenty of room, I tell them, and plates for everyone.  Of course, there's plenty of laughter and a fair share of yelling and more hugs than you can count.

And there are words. Words, words, words. With ages ranging from five months to 92 years, we talk about everything from the  newest trend in toddler footwear ("I love your light-up sneakers!") to the freaky November weather. Only a few topics are out of bounds by unspoken agreement, because we have Many Opinions and we love these people too much for those conversations on this day. 

This is the biggest group to ever attend the Best Day of the Year celebration, and I wildly overestimated the appetites of a group that is made up largely of toddlers and geriatrics. (Did we really need four turkeys? We did not.) Even that was a plus, though: I loved being able to put a box of ZipLoc bags on the table and urge everyone to take some Thanksgiving home for supper.

The over-production also led to the second best day of the year when this was my breakfast:

Leftover sweet potatoes topped with leftover cranberry sauce. In  my defense, that's a bowl of Vitamin A topped with antioxidants, so it's practically health food, especially compared to the next night when  I fed my family turkey and noodles ladled over mashed potatoes and partnered with a basket of dinner rolls.

Carbs on top of carbs with a side of carbs are a sure sign that the curtain should be drawn on the Best Day of the Year, so the rest of the un-freezable left-overs left with the garbage truck and our diets have returned to their normal healthy goals.

If your Best Day of the Year was not this wonderful, please join us next year. We have hugs and plates and food for everyone.

Come, ye thankful people, come.

The Mercantile: Shaking My Head in Admiration

You can't say I don't love you.

Because you asked for it, at the moment when I should be peeling potatoes and dusting under the piano (not simultaneously--I'm not that efficient) I am ignoring Best Day of the Year preps to report on my visit to the Pioneer Woman empire.

The short answer, so you can get back to your own peeling and dusting, is that it was So. Much. Fun.

No surprise there, right? I discovered Ree Drummond and her Pioneer Woman blog back in the early days, when her now-college-aged kids were just babies. I read the "Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" saga in episodic blog posts, way before it was a book, and was flabbergasted to realize that the ranch where she made all that delicious-looking food was located near Pawhuska, Oklahoma, just over an hour away from Small Town. I was a fan as she documented ranch life, began writing cookbooks, launched a housewares line, got her own television show, etc., etc., etc., but we hadn't actually made the trip to see the Mercantile for ourselves.

So when Husband suggested we check out her store as a pre-birthday road trip, I was on board.

First of all, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that a weekday in mid-November may be the ideal time for such a visit. The weather was glorious, and the crowds were a perfectly manageable size. We've visited Chip and Joanna's Magnolia Market empire in Waco and the elbow-to-elbow shopping there practically gave me the hives. Last Thursday in Pawhuska there were enough people that it felt bustling and energetic, few enough that we could browse at our leisure. We estimated that 80% of the Mercantile crowd was made up of women approximately my age, 10% were trailing husbands, and the remainder were homeschoolers and outliers.

The Mercantile itself has several sections. A merchandise area opens on to the restaurant, which flows into the deli. Upstairs is a bakery, with huge windows and cozy couches so that you can take as much time as you want inspecting the cool stuff downstairs while your husband watches Pawhuska passing by in comfort, if your husband has low tolerance for dishes and kitchen supplies.

But my Husband is a really good sport, so he was holding the shopping basket while I ooooh-ed and aaaah-ed at everything I wanted to buy, which was pretty much everything in the building.

If you have even a passing acquaintance with Pioneer Woman merchandise, you know what was in the store. It's colorful, practical, vintage-y, and surprisingly affordable. I am in a new stage of my life in which I try to not buy anything for which I do not have storage or immediate use, so my major purchase of the day came from this table:

Yup. A plastic wrap dispenser. I am officially No Fun At All. But in my defense, I've used that dispenser constantly during the pre-BDotY cooking preps, and I love it. It also was less expensive here than in a shop down the road we stopped at later in the day.

And in fact, my very favorite display table was the one that contained items Ree uses in her own kitchen--big mixing bowls, strainers, cutting boards. I regret not purchasing a couple of small sheet pans. They were heavy-duty and at $8 each, a great buy.

Okay, okay, I hear you shouting at me from cyberspace: "But MomQueenBee, what did you eat?"

Oh, my. I need to preface this by reminding you it was my birthday trip, and I checked in with my doctor daughter-in-law:

We waited about half an hour for a table, but it was high noon and there was more shopping to do while we waited. And then we threw calorie counts to the wind and ordered a couple of wonderful, decadent sandwiches. 

The Ranch Hand Sandwich was meaty and ranchy, and featured pulled pork cooked with Dr. Pepper, ham, cheese, buttered hoagie bun, and a side of homemade potato chips. Husband's was the chicken-fried chicken and he had to carve it into pieces before he could fit his mouth around it:

And in full disclosure, we shared butternut squash soup as an appetizer:

We regret nothing. It was delicious.

Our sandwiches were about $14 each, but iced tea was 25 cents, which made the entire meal seem like a bargain. The heavenly pecan cinnamon roll (which we bought at the bakery and took home for actual-birthday breakfast) would have been $4 to eat in deli, but was $6 for three packaged to carry.

All told, we spent about three hours in Pawhuska. Outside of the Mercantile there isn't much to do--a couple of small shops, and one decent-sized antique store that was fun. But that's enough for me. 

It was amazing to look at what the Pioneer Woman has built. Everything about the Mercantile, from merchandise to food to atmosphere, was completely on brand for her and for her readers and fans, and I am both of those groups. 

It was a fun day, and I am shaking my head in admiration of her accomplishments.  

And now it's off to more BDotY preps. I'm going to be spatchcocking a turkey (when I announced this to Husband at breakfast he was taken aback until I explained further) which heightens the adrenaline level as I realize that this could be a recipe for disaster. Hahaha! See what I did there?

It's the Best Day of the Year. Be thankful!

The Power of the Post (and a Teaser)

Well. I seem determined to transform this corner of the blogosphere into a continual chorus of "I never endorse anything...oh, wait, here's an endorsement!"

Take last week's post, for example, when I admitted that after saying for two decades I'd pay anything to have my groceries delivered, that turned out not to be true. I was irked at Instacart because in addition to a delivery charge (which I was willing to pay), after I'd paid for a year of deliveries there also turned out to be a service fee and a tip for the delivery person automatically added to each order.

I was not happy, and I yanked that MomQueenBee seal of approval faster than you could say "There's no such thing as a free lunch or free delivery."

BUT WAIT! There's a rest-of-the-story to that post! Instacart has rescinded the service fee for Express members! Now we only pay the annual fee, and the automatic tip that can be changed by the customer. My delivery person today even used my loyalty card as requested.

I can't claim credit for this--or can I? May I be so puffed-up as to think that the Instacart moguls read the post preview that I had sent them in the spirit of fairness, and thought "Well, that certainly seems greedy of us, and also MomQueenBeen has so much influence that we dare not interfere with her happiness so RESCIND THE SERVICE FEE! QUICKLY!"

While I may have to have a word with them about consistency in use of loyalty cards, yay for you, Instacart! You've earned, by actual count, five exclamation points in the preceding two paragraphs.

And now I seem to have hijacked my own blog post. This was meant to be a report about my birthday, which was last Friday but I managed to fool all of my friends into stretching the celebration to three days by Facebooking a road trip picture on Thursday with the caption "Birthday trip."

Instantly I received lovely birthday greetings from dozens, and not a single one mentioned my accordion-pleated neck in that shot because they were all focusing on the door behind Husband and me. About half of the dozens also asked for a full report on what was behind that door, so since today's post is already getting too long, I'm going to give you that report tomorrow.

And if the adorable and on-brand polka-dotted soup bowls in today's beauty shot didn't give away where we were, here's another hint:

Tune in tomorrow for the inside scoop on the Mercantile and the birthday! Spoiler: It's another endorsement.

Another Endorsement, Except Not

You all know that this blog, like Ivory soap, is 99.9% pure although in this case we are pure blather rather than pure soap. It has no advertising, no affiliate links, no way for me to make as much as a single penny by writing it. My total reward comes from you telling me how pretty I am, and I pander for that shamelessly. 

But on occasion I tell you how much I love something. A couple of weeks ago, for example, I gushed my endorsement for eShakti. I stand by that endorsement--today's lead photo is my rehearsal dinner dress for WotCII. It's an eShakti dress paired with a shawl I was knitting at the moment that just happened to match pretty perfectly, and I love that dress. 

Today I'm not endorsing a product, I'm writing about a service now being provided in Small Town that I originally loved but and gushed about on social media, but since those non-blogged endorsements I have learned some things since that makes me want to make sure you know them, too. 

The whole time the Boys were growing up I moaned about how much I hated shopping, and how I would be glad to pay whatever it cost to have my groceries delivered and carried into the house. Just a couple of weeks ago this kind of service came to Small Town--Instacart. 

It seemed too good to be true. For $6.99, Instacart shoppers would gather items from your online shopping list, pay for them with the credit card, and deliver them to your house within the time window you specify. 

Oh. My. Gosh. 

Does that seem like heaven? On the days when I loaded four grocery bags on each arm to minimize the number of times I walk the half-block between our driveway and the back door, it would have sounded like paradise. 

I signed up for the two-week free trial, and it was lovely. The shoppers picked out good produce and were friendly and upbeat as they brought the groceries clear to the kitchen. So I signed up for the full-year Instacart Express that, rather than charging $6.99 for each delivery, would give unlimited  deliveries on orders of $35 and over. 

I was so excited--until my shopper accidentally left the store check-out receipt with the bags. When I compared that paper receipt to my online receipt from Instacart, I discovered cost of the service was substantially more than $6.99 per delivery. For one thing, a service charge and tip were automatically added to my cost. The service charge of 5% of order total, and an automatic tip of 5% (which can be adjusted after you have been charged for the delivery) add 10% to your bill on top of the delivery fee. But this didn't bother me as much as seeing that I was charged product prices that were higher than in-store prices. 

Customer service at Instacart explained it this way:

The paper receipt is also not an accurate portrayal of what you were charged on your order, and will not include any delivery fee, tip, services fees, or store markups if applicable. The total you see when checking out on Instacart is a more accurate portrayal of what you will be charged (barring any replacements, refunds, or weight adjustments). When your order is completed, you can view your electronic receipt to see the final amount you will be charged. You can access it directly from your Instacart Account under View Order Detail.

All told, according to my math (and verified by my in-house CPA), I'm paying around 20% more for my groceries than I would have if I had done my own shopping. 

In addition, although I asked for my own shopper loyalty card to be used (so that we could get fuel points and loyalty discounts) Instacart apparently gets the loyalty rewards on its own card. 

And at this point I need to say that it may well have been that all of these charges were outlined somewhere on the website before I forked over my $149, but I did not see it on the Instacart website before I signed up and I cannot find them now. 

Would I have used this service when I was working full-time and trying to wrangle a family? Absolutely. There were many times when I simply did not have enough hours in the day and would have gladly paid whatever it took to have someone else do my grocery shopping. If you're in that part of your life, God bless and carry on. 

Now, though? I regret that I spent $149 that I could have used on two or three new dresses from eShakti. 

Wedding of the Century Part Deux: Why I Cried

(Although I reserve the right to change my mind, this post wraps up my Thoughts about WotCII. I have no lovelier memory than this.)

I cried twice during the hours when we celebrated the marriage of Boy#2 to his Lovely Girl.

By nature I am the most tear-prone person in any room. I cry at airports (both departures and arrivals), fall foliage, Hallmark commercials, the sight of perfect baby toes. But this wedding was so purely joyful that tears were almost unthinkable.

Almost, until that moment when the doors swung open at the end of that long, carpeted aisle, and my son saw his bride arriving on her father's arm.

I was watching his face and I could see that first glimpse through his eyes, the moment when the organ prelude switched to triumphal bridal procession and she took her first steps toward him. The years melted away. I had seen that face the moment he was drawing his first breath, and truly, this felt the same.

As I did when he was born, I cried for just a moment.

And then we blessed them, and received the holy moments that were the ceremony and their vows, and as the church doors were flung open again for our newlyweds to walk back down the aisle together, the sun suddenly came out for the first time that day. They took their first steps of marriage in a blaze of light. If I had seen it in a movie, I would have rolled my eyes and called it impossible; it was that kind of day.

It wasn't until near the end of the reception that I cried again. The toasts had been splendid--touching, funny, heartfelt. Dinner was lovely, and the special dances that opened the dance were heartwarming. But then the band kicked up the volume and the real celebration began.

As a family, we aren't really dancers. Boy#1 danced largely because Lovely Girl#1 loves to dance, and Husband pulled me onto the floor for the slow numbers, but the floor was packed with college friends and people from Wisconsin, because hooo-boy! Those Wisconsin folks love to dance. Even M.'s grandfather, whose mobility is limited to a wheelchair, was on the floor and keeping time to the beat of Uptown Funk. 

M. is a dancer, though, and by that I mean she is a real dancer: She was a competitive figure skater until a knee injury ended her skating in her late teens, and then she became part of her university's competitive ballroom dance team. One of my favorite pictures is of her in full competition mode, toe pointed, shoulders squared, eyes focused on an imaginary point beyond her partner's shoulder.

For much of the evening Two and M. were busy circulating, greeting loved ones and accepting hugs and good wishes. They danced often, though, and as the hours wore on I stopped watching their every movement.

It was a few minutes before the clock was to strike the ending hour of the day when I noticed a commotion on the dance floor. I looked up to see that those tireless dancers and friends had slid to the edge of the floor, forming a circle.

Inside the circle was our new Lovely Girl#2, her head thrown back, and she was spinning and spinning and spinning. Her beautiful dress billowed out as she pirouetted, and with every revolution she was seeing her new husband cheering her on, a Best Beloved among her beloveds. And then she grabbed the handles of her grandfather's wheelchair and ran with him as they circumnavigated the circle again, high-fiving and laughing.

Tears rolled down my cheeks.

This is the way it should start. In joy and sunlight and laughter and music and family and friends, and just a few tears to baptize this new beginning.

Amen, and amen.