A gooble gooble dickel, I'm thankful that John Madden only costs a nickel!

Thanksgiving is drawing near, and I thought I would share with you the one Schrute family tradition we consistently uphold. Most folks gather their families together to gorge themselves with all sort of holiday eats. Turkey is often the preferred choice of meat to be served. However, each year the Schrutes go out to Mr. Gates' back yard where he raises John Maddens. This has been small yet not so profitable side project for Gates. Unfortunately for him the Schrutes are the only returning customers. But, luckily for us his operation is close and he usually cuts us a good deal. The kids really enjoy the part where we cut his head off and let him run around in the backyard for a bit.

One might ask, why?!? Others may ask, how does one prepare a John Madden for a Thanksgiving feast? Honestly it is not very easy, in fact it is quite labor intensive but so worth it. About a month before Thanksgiving, we feed him a turducken each day, until 2 days before Thanksgiving. Some of you loyal readers might not be familiar with what a John Madden fattening turducken is. So, this is what it entails (Please note the numbers I have provided for you to follow along, it's basically like stacking a set of Russian stack dolls, only we start stuffing the smallest bird into the larger bird): 7-parakeet, 8-starling, 6-magpie, 9-pigeon, 5-crow, 10-mud duck, 4-flamingo, 11-spotted owl, 3-whopping crane, 12-buzzard, 2-bald eagle, and 1-turkey, plus any other seasoning that may be applicable. On year, Gates told us a that lamb fries would be great treat to stuff inside the parakeet, but Quigibo got violently ill, so we haven't done it since.

Unfortunately, we found out this year that our John Madden had a mate. Low and behold it was a Brett Farve!! Man Gates needs to keeps his Farves out of the Madden's pen! This year there was all sorts of half washed up quarterbacks and half fat sports announcers all over the place! Thankfully, we were able to separate our purebread Madden from the half breeds. I'm not sure a Madden/Farve mixture would taste as good.

You might also wonder how in the world does Barby fit that oversized Madden in the oven? She doesn't we hire a backhoes to come and dig a oversized pig roasting pit to cook him in. The whole process takes about 5 cords of wood, and 2 whole days of cooking time! Next year, I think we will rent a dumpster and fill it with peanut oil to deep fry that fat Madden! Also, we will bypass feeding John Madden turduckens for a month and will just stuff him with the whole turducken before we cook him. Mmmmm, tasty....I can wait for leftover Madden sandwiches to take to work!

Tricker Freaks!

Well, it is Halloween time again in the Schrute household. Which has resulted in slacking with my blog. Since we have the cutest kids ever, it takes us a really long time to get them ready for Halloween. We usually make them dress up like ugly kids, so they get an idea of how they feel. You know what I mean...the kind of kids that you have to hang a pork chop around their neck just to get the family dog to play with them. So, after a lot of hard work by Barby and I this is what we came up with:

We decided that Moeisha should go as Punky Brewster. Back in the day she was by far one of the uglier children on TV. I can't even believe they let this kid on TV, she definitely a had a face for radio. It was so bad that on the filming set, the director had to make her bathe in gravy just to get her dog Brandon to be around her and pretend to like her.

Quigibo has always had a passion to go as a senile old coot who not only desperately needs to shave his eyebrows, but continually rambles incoherently on Sunday nights. Helping Quigibo with his costume was really not all that difficult just time consuming. We used about a gallon of Nair on his face and neck, then colored his hair and eyebrows white. But by the end of the night he looked like same old Quigibo again only he had a skunk stripe and bushy white eyebrows.

Xavier has always longed to dress up like a quasi-gay, prepubescent, wanna-be pro-karaoke singer. This kid is by far one of the ugliest girls I have ever seen! I can't believe they let her on television. What is this world coming to! I haven't watched a lot of TV lately, but maybe she is only allowed on the pay-per view channels.

Zeek decided to go as Webester. He got this idea from Mr. Gates. Gates says Webster was so ugly that his biological parents gave him up to be raised by a couple of white crackers. According to Gates this child was by far one of the biggest embarrassments to his race. Not that his acting was bad, it's just that he was so ugly! In fact Barby and I are extremely worried, because Zeek is still wearing his costume and refused to take it off. I think this may have something to do with Barby's surgery? He keeps telling us that since mommy doesn't have to take off her new costume why should he?

The worst part about Halloween this year was that all the homes we trick or treated at didn't think our kids costumes were good. They would answer the door and say, "Oh, I'm sorry deary did you forget to dress up?" Or, "That's too bad you daddy worked for AIG and you don't have money for a costume." Idiots! My kids dressed like ugly television freaks!! The only one who was scared out of his wits was Gates. He almost had a hear attack when he opened the door and saw our lovely children.