My Weekend: Burned Turkey, Sunrises, Crowds & The Best Christmas Tree Ever

Now THAT was a weekend!

Sure, we cheated a bit and threw a personal day on the start of it - but we were all pretty tanked from LHC - so we figured we had it comin...haha..

Hope you had a good weekend with friends and family-

Mine started with this-

Mistake. Ugh. But still- it was really the only time i was in a store the whole time- so it wasn't that bad.

Ended up swinging by my brothers house too and he asked if I wanted any shephards pie? I'm like- "thats the dumbest question anyone has ever asked. EVER!

OF COURSE I WANT SHEPARD'S PIE!" He said "its got venison in it!". I said - "Bring it On!"

And I know it looks kind of gross- but Im tellin ya - it was excellent.

Later - headed out for a quiet dinner before the holiday with our friends Jolene and Dave - and ended up in Ogunquit ME at a place called "That Place" -

And let me tell ya- it was EXCELLENT. Great service and food. A nice place to go if you want to relax with good friends and good food.

Thanksgiving was going to be a challenge because we decided to deep fry the turkey for the first time. Now, I ve had it cooked that way before, but we've never done it. So we went out and got a fryer, and read all the safety tips and followed all the directions. Pre heated it per instructions, and kept track of the temp inside the bird- and when we pulled it out -

The bird looked like this-

Ummm.....a BURNED BIRD?

Everybody was laughing, and I was thinking- GET THE NUMBER OF THAT CHINESE RESTAURANT, WE MAY NEED IT!!! - haha - but - I was telling everyone- "Just wait a few minutes- lets see what we got here, because I HAVE FAITH!"

And what do you know? We sliced off a couple small pieces - and it was AWESOME! We had put some rub on the turkey, so THAT was what burned, but the inside was PERFECT!!!

We had a really nice Thanksgiving Dinner with Cait and Tyler, his girlfriend Morgan, and Valeries brother and his wife. It was a good day....

And the next day, I got up to go catch a sunrise - and ended up on Plum Island -

Beautiful place, and you never know what kind of wildlife you're gonna see when you're there.

Valerie came down with a pretty bad sore throat on Friday - so she laid low for a couple days, so I went out both mornings with the camera.

And heres a few I shot over the next few days -

(You knew I had to check out a couple local baldies, right????) Hahah -

That last one was trying to carry a branch that was about 5 feet long to the nest, but it was too much for him and he dropped it. (Eagles re-fortify their nests in early winter).

Next morning I headed to Cape Porpoise for a pretty nice sunrise -

But the best story from the weekend was - Valerie had heard about this place in Barrington NH. The Feathery Friend/McManus Coal and Pellet Sales is the name of the place and we heard they were selling Christmas Trees, and giving all the proceeds to the Barrington Food Pantry. So - we decided we'd get our tree early this year and headed over.

Thats where we met Elaine and Henry. They went out and bought 300 CHRISTMAS TREES (nice ones, too!), and they are selling them by donation only. It's a "give what you can" type of thing. There are no prices on the trees. If you can afford a lot, give it. If you can't, the give what you can, but they want to spread a little holiday spirit by giving back.

That's the kind of thing we can get behind....

So we chatted with Elaine and Henry and some of the family- and they were just lovely folks. They thanked us profusely for helping to feed those in need, and I only responded that it was something that we also believe in. Elaine said that because of us, a family would smile on Christmas morning- and I responded with- "Elaine- YOU'RE the one who should be thanked. You went out decided to do something to make a difference, and you purchased these trees for others to buy, and you're giving every penny to help feed folks. YOU'RE THE ONE who should be getting thanked". Of course, she brused it aside. But that's what people like Elaine and Henry do. They don't want to credit. They just want to make a difference in the world. One christmas smile at a time.

And that's a beautiful thing.

Thank to Elaine and Henry, for the best Christmas tree we've ever gotten.

And I ended the night out by the fireplace - just chilling.

Hope you all had a good weekend-

Now I gotta hit the rack, I gotta get up in 6 hrs -

See ya then -

g