The Day Approaches!

We've been in the holiday season for a while now (according to my calculations <2+2=4>, it starts right after Halloween) and tomorrow is the first big day. Presumably, everyone will sit down with loved ones to eat Thanksgiving dinner (which is an utterly inappropriate term since my "dinner" always starts somewhere around one. Let's be honest with each other, that's lunch time) and, after a long day of cooking (or food-ordering), enter into a time of genuine merriment and face-stuffing. The gorging will be followed by reclined chairs filled with people in unbuttoned pants succumbing to a tryptophan induced coma. Eventually, everyone will regain their liveliness and the festivities continue with dessert and more turkey munching. If you're like my family, you just graze for the rest of the day, lounge around, maybe watch some movies, and just spend some good time together. At some point we may clean up (or... we may not). 

What's the point of all this? Why do we eat until bursting to celebrate being Thankful? I honestly don't have any profound reason for this. Perhaps it's because we're enjoying the spoils of our hard work: hard work to make the money to buy ingredients and food, hard work to cook such a big dinner, hard work to be around family all day without mutiny, the hard work you'll be expected to do once you go back to work/school/SAHM/whatever you're expected to do daily... We're thankful for the people that provide the funds, the one who provide the delicious meal, the ones who provide sanity when you're about to stab a fork into your drunk uncle's hand (just to clarify, this does not apply to my uncle), and the ones who perform all the tasks that we have no desire to do.  Or maybe because we just like to eat. I think it's probably the latter. I mean, c'mon,  we're Americans (although, I am eating with a German couple and British couple tomorrow. My mom likes to invite anyone and everyone for Thanksgiving, something that I've always really loved about her). Whatever the reason for our feeding frenzy, we're thankful and tomorrow is the official day to express that thanks. 

All in all, go see your family. Love them. Hug them. Talk to them. Tell them you're thankful for them. And enjoy the turkey.

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Here's your science word of the week (I know it WAS science word of the day, but since it's been a week since that day, we're just gonna adjust accordingly):

Trophic Cascade: an ecological phenomenon triggered by the addition or removal of top predators and involving reciprocal changes in the relative populations of predator and prey through a food chain, which often results in the dramatic changes in ecosystem and structure of nutrient cycling (Encyclopedia Britannica).

Basically, if you have an animal (A1) that eats an animal (A2) that eats a plant, then the more A1 eats A2, the less A2 in the ecosystem, so the less the plant is being eaten, which will increase the plant population. There can also be a bottom-up effect where the abundance of the plant can inhibit or aid in population growth of A1 and A2! I don't know about you, but I think this is really cool.

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This is going to be the last topic of the day: Jack and I had our family pictures done the other day. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while and I'm glad to say they turned out beautifully (not that I expected any differently). So I'm going to do some shameless plugging: If you need any family photos done, my friend Julie Brock does absolutely amazing work. She did Jack's one-year old pictures and I didn't even look at other photographers when it came time for our family pictures. She is fun and will go to all sorts of lengths to make your child smile for the camera. She can do shoots in her in-home studio or an on-site shoot. Her prices are reasonable , her photos are beautiful, and she runs LOTS of specials. She is currently running a Black Friday special that can be found on her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/JulieBrockPhotography). I highly suggest her to EVERYONE. She is also thinking about doing wedding photography, so keep her in mind for that, too. And now, you can check out our family pictures :) Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!