Thanksgiving Festivities

As Mrs McGoo stated on her blog, the McGoo's decided to stay home this year for Thanksgiving.  A lot of intangibles went into the decision, but this was the first time I hadn't been back home for Thanksgiving (with the exception of one trip to KC) since I was in my 20's.  So a long time.

This time around we stayed in town and celebrated the holiday with Mrs McGoo's family.  I questioned my mother-in-law (The Grinch) if we were having a ham on Thanksgiving.  I've learned that it isn't something that everyone does (which is strange to me - I like ham more than turkey really), and she told me that she wasn't.  I quickly complained about this issue and somehow she mental ninja'd me into deep frying a turkey and she would take care of the ham. 

Reluctantly I agreed to cook the turkey.  So I set out to Costco to get the oil and fixins for a marinade/seasoning for the turkey.  Costco's options were - cheap kirkland's veggie oil, corn oil, and canola oil - all of which made for a tough decision.  I've only cooked with veggie oil, so I went with the cheap oil.

The night before I stayed with the in-laws so I could prepare the turkey and get it all lathered up with seasoning and some marinade.


The next morning I fire up the cooker and get the oil heating up and go into get the bird out of the fridge to room temperature.  I figure it should take about 40 mins or so for the oil to come to a boil.  Equally, it should take about as long to get a few things taken care of in the kitchen. 




About 40 mins go by and I check on the oil and it is still not boiling.  I check the temp and it's showing around 350 degrees so I decided to let it go for a little longer.  Went back out a little while later and still not boiling and it reads close to 400 degrees.  I begin to start to wonder what is going on and think that maybe I need to cover it and as I go to cover, it combusted. 

I sat there for a while and began to wonder what happened.  I'm thinking through everything I did and it was correct.  Took every precaution that I could and still it caught fire.  Thankfully I didn't have the bird in the cooker at the time and began to think about what I could do to "Save Thanksgiving."  Thankfully, MILC went inside and found her roaster and we threw the bird in there, cooked it, and finished just in time for the rest of the family dinner time. 

While we're getting the bird cleaned up a bit, my father-in-law Lloyd and the rest of the fam are outside taking a fire extinguisher to the pot of burning oil.  Apparently there was a bit of a small explosion which led to a few small burns on his hand.  Thankfully it wasn't anything serious and eventually the fire died out. 

Thankfully, the Wilson's saved Thanksgiving.  Which is quite ironic really when you think about it. 

Didn't the Grinch save Christmas too?

A Year Gone By

Hard to believe it's been a year since my last post.  Truth is, there were plenty of times I felt like blogging, however, every time I went to do so, I saw my last post, read it, and didn't want it to become just another post.  As time went by, I felt like I'd wait and come back and reassess things after a year.

I recently told Mrs McGoo that Monday, the 19th, was a year since Kodi had passed away.  A lot has happened in that time, yet it still seems like it was a a few weeks ago that it happened.  Still miss the guy like crazy and there are so many times I still look when I wake up in the morning to see if he is laying on his bed. 

I still miss ya buddy.

So it has been a year since I last blogged and I figured I would document (somewhat) what has gone on in our lives since the last time I posted.

- I met one of my lifelong goals last December by graduating from college and, in fact, did it in three and a half years.  Really big thanks goes out to Mrs. McGoo for being an incredible supporter of the venture.  Honestly, it is something I had wanted to do for a long time and never thought it would be possible.

- After Kodi passed away, we felt like we wanted to wait for the right time to get another dog.  I wanted to really be able to grieve and also give Dexter a lot of time and attention that I felt like he should get. However, we realized after a while, Dex didn't like the idea of being alone.  All Dex has ever known was having a brother to play with around the house, so when we left the house, Dex was all alone. He started acting out a lot and tearing things up, which led us to believe he was lonely.  So we talked and felt like it was a good time to get him another brother. 

Enter "Tango" our new puppy.  There is a story behind how we went about getting him and how we came up with his name, but I'll save that for another blog.  Needless to say, he's been a great addition to the family.

- Mission Trips to Ethiopia and Uruguay.

- Mrs. McGoo one more year of Nursing school.

- Obama re-elected

Hopefully a lot more happening in the next year.  If the Mayans were wrong...

I'm confident they were.

Until next time.