Many Thanks to Give

Quite a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday....last week?  The week before?  Well, whenever it was, it was wonderful.  Here is the first thing I loved about it.  On the day before Thanksgiving I had cleared the family schedule assuming I would be super busy and way too overwhelmed to do anything but hustle and bustle in the kitchen, and most of the neighborhood friends were the same way.  We even turned down a couple of play dates.  And though the morning was indeed rather busy, the afternoon got really quiet and kind of long, and then the funniest thing happened.  Suddenly several friends in the neighborhood quietly reached out to spend some pre-Thanksgiving time together before we were with our families the next day.  Not that families aren't great, because they are.  But friends are pretty great too and though of course I couldn't see every single friend on the block, I did witness kind of a funny migration - one friend called to invite my girls over and as I was taking them there, Troy was taking Stomper to the park and they watched some other neighborhood kids walking to the house of still another friend.  After I got back there was a little knock on the door that brought the happy surprise of yet another friend stopping for a visit when she was supposed to be out getting exercise.  It was so nice to just quietly sit and laugh about stuff and sort of touch base with several dear friends.

Other things to love: cousins!!! Both of my brothers came in town for the holiday and truly there is nothing like getting our kids together.  My sis-in-law's family was all gathering here as well, so we didn't get Adam's family for Thursday, but we still had a great day.  I headed over to my parent's house nice and early with the girls so I could get the turkey in the oven.  I've never made a turkey before and I'll say that it turned out....fine.  Pretty good, room for improvement.  So we puttered and cooked all morning while Troy and Stomper stayed home for a bit.  You see, Stomper had been asked to babysit a friend's pet hedgehog for the holiday weekend and he couldn't bear to part with the prickly little thing despite its temperamental nature and extremely sharp quills.  Troy read Roald Dahl to him while he snuggled with Poky via a thick fleece blanket. Our meal was a lovely time together and somehow everyone stayed happy long enough for me to be on location for almost 12 hours. Whew, I was tired!

Oma did a lot of swing-pushing in her back yard due to the lovely lovely weather.  Bundle got hit the face only once with the swing, yielding only one little tiny black eye.  

Me and my first (almost) cooked turkey  - we were flipping it onto its back for the final minutes of roasting

Cousin Hannah and her first apple pie - deeelish.  (I mean the pie, not Hannah.)

Friday was our WHOLE family get-together, and we decided that since this would be our only time to be all together we would make the day an early Christmas party.  We really did make it a day-long party, boy.  We started at the zoo, committing my dad to join us no matter what since he usually lets just mom tag along with one of us.  I knew he was going to love it, and watching him watch Rizzo the polar bear who was doing her swim-up-to-the-window trick right in front of him was the highlight of the trip for me.

After the zoo we ate some lunch at my  house and sat around the living room chatting away before we took the kids (okay, and ourselves) to see Rise of the Guardians, which I thought was just delightful and included possibly my favorite incarnation of Santa ever.

And no, we were not done yet.  After the movie came pizza, pictures and presents at my parent's house.  I was so glad we had our little early Christmas gift exchange.  As each of us siblings has grown up, married and started having kids we have traveled less and less at Christmas time. It's just good to be HOME when you have little kids, partly because it's too hard to make Christmas morning mobile, and partly because...it's just good to be home.  I'm all in favor of that except that we don't get to see our nieces and nephews open their gifts and we have to stress out about getting things to the post office in time.  I so enjoyed just being together.  I wish we could do it this way every year.

The rest of the weekend continued on since Peter and Sheri stayed with us through Sunday.  We had a really fun day chilling out a bit, letting one another go on errands while the kids cluelessly played together through our assorted absences.  In the afternoon we braved the crowds at the new City Creek Center because Sheri found out there is a great Santa there this year. He's great partly because he was adorable and very authentic as was his wife, the honorable Mrs. Claus.  He's also great because you can SET APPOINTMENTS for what time you want to meet with Santa thus eliminating a long, boring and whiny wait in line.  Love that.  Didn't love so much not being allowed to take our own pictures....but Sheri and I decided to split the cost of one package.  Suckers we may be:

We ended the day with our fourth annual showing of The Muppet Christmas Carol whilst munching on the traditional Waffles and Wassail.  I especially enjoyed the evening because Sheri brought me a surprise awesome mug from the Disney store since she had heard that in one crazy day a couple of weeks ago I lost my three favorite drinking vessels to breakage and melting.  (Not everyone is as attached to their drinking vessels as am I, so you may not understand the great comfort I took in the receipt of a cool new villainous mug.)

By Sunday....we were about all wrung out.  We tried to hang out and relax on Sunday but we were too tired.  Doesn't make sense, I know, but it's true.  So Peter and Sheri packed up and we fell over dead but happy.