Thanksgiving

We realize it is almost Christmas, but we had some requests to post what we did for Thanksgiving (and to put more pictures of Tracie's belly on). We volunteered to make homemade root beer for a get together the weekend before and for Thanksgiving dinner. The Saturday night before we went to, or called, just about every store in Anchorage to see if they had dry ice and root beer extract. We found one store that had dry ice, so we rushed over there before they closed and bought $20 worth. Then we still had to get the flavoring... not one of the 6 stores we tried had it. So we weren't able to make the root beer for the get together. Pretty lame. We finally found root beer extract at Natural Pantry, but not until Monday, so we just kept the dry ice on the porch in the freezing temperatures for a few days until Thanksgiving. Thursday came, Tracie had made pies, John mixed up the root beer and we were ready to go, but when John grabbed the bag of dry ice from the porch....it was empty! It had evaporated (actually sublimated), leaving a bag of paper. Lame. Luckily, the one store that carried it was staying open until 3:00pm, so we hurried before it closed to buy more. And then it all worked out ok, and turned out delicious, but we definitely learned that making homemade rootbeer, in Alaska in the middle of the winter, is not an easy process!