Thanksgiving 2014

I have just emerged from mountains of Christmas shopping, present wrapping and mailing, and bill paying (sigh). Hopefully I'll have time to get a couple of blog posts in before the holiday parties/cookie baking/musical concerts overwhelm me. I'll start with a quick recap of our family's Thanksgiving.

Here's the Thanksgiving project Aurora did in preschool; she "ate" all that stuff and is now a fat person! Hee hee.

For starters, this was not the Thanksgiving we'd expected to have this year. Our original plan was to travel to Colorado and celebrate the holiday at my parent's new home in the Heather Gardens retirement community. However, due to the death of Nathan's father-in-law, Glenn Barrett, we decided to remain home for the remainder of 2014. We wanted to spend time with Sandra, who will need family close by more than ever this holiday season. Although I was a little disappointed to miss out on Colorado (we haven't been back in a couple of years, and I still haven't seen my parents' new house!), I was happy to stay home as well. Ryan and Judy and their son Cameron were traveling to Arizona for Thanksgiving as well, so we still got to have a cozy meal with Colorado relatives.

Our charter school takes the whole week of Thanksgiving off. It's awesome, and I always wonder why more schools don't do that. On the last day of school pre-break, the school had a Thanksgiving-themed assembly, in which each class performed a holiday-appropriate song or skit. Lorelai's class involved a kid dressed as a turkey, pouring his heart out while everyone else sat behind him singing the chorus. It was a little strange.

Celeste's class all had "turkey masks" for their musical number, "Albuquerque Turkey." It was cute, but very short! I barely got a picture taken.

With the end of the recital came the beginning of Thanksgiving break. However, the fun wasn't quite over yet. The middle school students hosted a fall carnival/fundraiser that began as soon as school let out. The girls begged to stay and play some of the games, and I obliged, doling out what little cash I had in my wallet.

 

The games were all simple enough, with tiny toys as rewards. The girls all seemed to have a lot of fun trying out all the activities. Celeste even got to throw a pie at some brave adult volunteer!

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was a full one. On Saturday alone, I went to a Relief Society women's day conference, took Celeste to a birthday party, baked a ton of cookies, and went on a date with Nathan to his boss's home for their annual "pre-Thanksgiving feast," in which delicious food is served and pleasant adult conversation is had. Whew. I was tired out at the end of the day, but fat and happy.

The next several days were filled with play dates, shopping and baking. We shopped for a few clothing items for the girls, as well as all the Christmas presents for our extended family. The girls were a little hyper going from store to store, but at home they were very helpful with wrapping the presents:

At first, I had planned on hosting the Thanksgiving dinner (originally, after the funeral, Sandy had said she didn't want to deal with it). However, a few weeks later, Sandy decided she wanted to host the meal after all. I suspect that part of the reason is that she prefers her stuffing to mine (to be fair, her stuffing is very delicious)! That wasn't the only reason, though; I think Sandy likes to cook for a crowd, and she wanted her house to be full of people for the holidays. Plus, she has better television reception than we do...all the better to watch football! That was possibly the final deciding factor.

Not to be denied my delicious home-cooked turkey dinner, I whipped up a "mini-Thanksgiving" for the elders in our ward on Wednesday night. It was tiring, but oh so tasty.

 As a result of that meal, the cooking the following day was much lighter. We "only" had to make one pie (a mixed berry pie, Nathan's favorite and one of my favorites too)...

 

...corn-bread stuffing, cooked in a pumpkin..

a sweet-potato souffle...

...our delicious orange tapioca salad, and rolls. No problem! Half of those items were whipped up the night before, the other half in the early morning while we watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade on our television.

Nathan left for Green Valley earlier than I did; he ended up golfing with his brother Ryan all morning before the meal. In recent months, Nathan has started to get a lot more interested in golf, and he hopes to gradually increase his skills in the coming months and years. He and Ryan did a full 18 holes while the "women-folk" worked on the food at home.

 

The girls had fun watching TV and playing with their cousin Cameron all morning too:

The timing worked out well; just after Ryan and Nathan arrived home, it was time to eat!

Look at the undisguised greed on the kids' faces. They had been putting off their appetites for a long time, but at long last they could stuff their faces. In fact, so could we all...and so we did.

Once our stomachs had deflated a bit and most of us had taken a nap, we went back for pie:

There was a lot of pie...which is never a bad thing.

It was not an eventful day, but it was a good one. We always love spending time with Ryan and Judy, and we love Cameron too. Our evening was a quiet one (none of us are big talkers), but it was spent in pleasant companionship.

The following day was the dreaded Black Friday, a date on which I have had mixed success in the past. I decided to follow my pattern for last year of shopping on my own, at my own pace. I moseyed out the door early in the morning (but not TOO early; I'm not a glutton for punishment!), and made it back to family in the early evening. I broke up the shopping with a trip to the movie theater, so the whole day wasn't too exhausting! And I got about 80% of our family's Christmas shopping done, so I consider it a day well spent (even though I was very glad for it to be over).

Nathan and the kids had a busy Black Friday as well, and it was a lot more fun than mine: they went and played with a bunch of dogs and cats at the local animal shelter, then went out for lunch and mini golf. I'm glad they enjoyed themselves, and part of me wished to be with them! Maybe next year, I guess. However, I am starting to get into this "Black Friday warrior" thing. I am not an aggressive shopper, but it can be exhilarating to find a good deal on a product. Also, I like to get all my holiday shopping out of the way as soon as possible, so I can have more time to relax in the month of December (at least, that's the theory...who knows if it will every really be more relaxing!).

After all the eating and shopping, it was time for the present wrapping and mailing I mentioned earlier. And now the circle is complete, and it's Christmas time, with all that entails! I'll try to peek into the blog and keep it updated in the month to come, but if I don't...well, you can all probably figure out why.