Thanksgiving 2013 in North Carolina

This year, for Thanksgiving, we made the drive all the way down to North Carolina to spend a few days with my parents and brothers.  It was a long drive, with lots of crazy holiday traffic, but it was definitely worth the effort to make this visit!

Sophia is old enough now to be beyond most of the worst of her stranger anxiety, so she deigned to allow her grandparents and uncles to hold her and play with her.  And Joshua is old enough to really play with others and appreciate all manner of fun games!

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, got to meet my brother Eric's girlfriend Heajin, went to see "Catching Fire" while my parents watched the kids, and generally had a lovely time.





Next time we visit, I'll have to bring my proper camera.  :)

Thankful for a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving 2012

This year, what with having a newborn and still trying to regain our family equilibrium, we decided not to travel for Thanksgiving.  The thought of wrangling our two kiddos on multiple flights and staying in a new place just long enough for them to get used to it before we had to turn right around and fly back was -- daunting.  So we decided to have a nice, quiet Thanksgiving at home!

We did mention to the PEF staff that we'd be around and willing to host some students for dinner.  As of Tuesday morning, we had one student likely confirmed to come over.  After staff meeting on Tuesday, David came home with a few other names as possibilities, so he emailed them and told them to feel free to come and bring other friends who were on campus for Thanksgiving.  As of Tuesday evening, we had six students confirmed.  By Wednesday evening, we were expecting twelve students.  And on Thursday morning, as David was driving to pick students up, we got two more possible additions to our table.  Ahh, scheduling fun with college students...  :)

We ended up having fourteen adults, including us, around our table for dinner.  (Which is exactly how many chairs we have, and one more than the number of fancy china dinner plates, and two more than the number of fancy water glasses.  So David and I used regular dishes, but at least we had seats!)  And I think we had just enough food for everyone.  :)  I had so much fun planning the dinner and making the dishes -- I relied pretty heavily on make-ahead recipes this year, and the dinner was actually pretty low-stress.  Thanks, in part, I'm sure, to my crazy planning tendencies...


What?  At least I didn't draw up charts and timelines this time!

The students who came over were such a lovely group, all of whom live too far away to make the trip home for just a few days.  They were all enchanted with Joshua and Sophia, and Joshua loved having so many new friends over!  He enlisted them to chase him back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, and one of the guys pulled out his phone and started playing an appropriate orchestral score to accompany the chase.  :)  The kids both went down for their naps just before we sat down to dinner in the early afternoon, and we had lively and entertaining grown-up conversation as we ate.

I was unfortunately too busy prepping and serving the meal to get any photos of the food or even of our guests, but I'm including some iPhone snapshots of the aftermath -- because, you know, pics or it didn't happen.  :)



And two cute Instagram shots of the kiddos -- Joshua enjoying the super-fun obstacle course we created just for him, and Sophia enjoying her favorite Thanksgiving dinner course.


Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by good friends!

Thanksgiving with the Keddies!

Let's see if I can get a Thanksgiving post up before Christmas...  :)

We hosted David's family for Thanksgiving this year -- it helps having David's brother and his wife living in Manhattan now.  (Still getting used to thinking of Iain and Erin as married!)  So David's parents drove out from Indy, and Iain and Erin took the train down from the city, and we all missed Donald, who's out in South Korea now...

The last time we hosted Thanksgiving, I was heavily pregnant.  And now look at our great big boy, imperiously commanding all of us on a brief walk around the neighborhood!




He had so much fun exploring with Grandma and Grandpa -- and I don't think they really minded being ordered around by such a benevolent dictator.  :)

(Here's where we switch to iPhone/Instagram pics...)

After a lovely, Wegmans-catered Thanksgiving dinner, we all hung out with Joshua and his books and trains.  Mostly his books -- he loved having so many new adults to beg to read to him!


Then on Black Friday, we made a trip into the city to hang out with Erin's family.  It was Joshua's first time on a train -- and both Joshua's and Grandpa's first time on the New York subway!




We then walked the High Line, a really lovely park converted from an old elevated rail line.  Currently, it runs from the meatpacking district up to Penn Station, but I believe there are plans to expand it further north.  I'm afraid Joshua wasn't terribly impressed -- but at least he got a nap in during this very busy and exciting day!




All in all, it was a lovely holiday weekend with family.  We have so many things to be thankful for!

Thanksgiving 2010

We flew down to North Carolina to spend Joshua's first Thanksgiving with my family -- ten months old, and he's already been on four flights!  (Though that's nothing compared to his buddy Luke... What was it, 16 flights in his first year?  Impressive!)

We ended up staying in a hotel while we were down there, in order to better guard Joshua's sleep and naptime routines.  It's actually kind of funny, the lengths we go to in our attempts to make sure J-bear gets all the sleep he needs... He's very much used to his routine, where we'll sing a little lullaby, put him in his crib, give him his ducky, tell him we love him, and then walk out of the room.  In our little hotel room, though, as long as we were within eyesight, he thought it was still playtime... So we ended up hiding in the little (2x5) corridor next to the bathroom and the room door, hunkered down with reading material and waiting until it was clear that he was totally asleep.  Next time, we're totally getting a suite with multiple rooms.  :)

But Joshua seemed to really enjoy the hotel experience!  Complete with his cute little travel highchair, and the ability to wander around, socks in hands, and explore new territory...


PJs, a comfy and cool highchair, and yummy Cheerios -- what more could a boy want? 

Playing with socks, and playing with papa!
And of course, it was wonderful spending time with my family.  They hadn't seen Joshua in person since our last visit, when he was only five months old... He's kind of grown up a little since then.  :)  He did have a little bout of stranger anxiety when we first arrived -- which wasn't exactly helped by my dad greeting him by growling fiercely right in his face.  Poor kid got all startled and then started screaming in fear.  :(  And poor grandpa -- he was just trying to get his grandson to laugh!  It took some soothing to get him to calm back down, and once I had my dad offer Joshua some Cheerios, all was right in his little world, and he warmed right up to his grandparents and uncles.


Still looks just a tiny bit scared here, but really, he did warm up! 

Showing Grandpa how much he loves this little spoon 

Seriously.  He loooved that spoon.  Thanks, Grandma, for letting him play with it! 

Thanksgiving dinner from the vantage point of a wee babe 

And just one more of Joshua and his beloved spoon
All in all, a very lovely first Thanksgiving for our dear little man!  We really do have so much to be thankful for!

Thankful

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for this face:


And this face:


And this face:


I'm also really thankful for this face:


And really, well, all of these faces.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanksgiving with the Keddies!

As I mentioned last week, David and I decided to host Thanksgiving for his family this year. I'm not quite far enough along to be officially restricted from traveling, but I'm starting to get to the uncomfortably large stage, so I'm thankful we decided not to travel for any of the holidays this year. And David's family very graciously agreed to come out to our neck of the woods to spend Thanksgiving with us!

Since we were already hosting a holiday dinner, we decided we'd throw it open to PEF students who live too far from home to go back for the short Thanksgiving break. We ended up having 7 students (including one alumna!) join us for dinner -- it was SO much fun having everyone over, and introducing these friends to our family!

So with 13 for dinner, the OCD planner in me borrowed a page from Jamie Rankin's book -- whenever he does his amazing 10-course Titanic dinners, he always has a schedule that lays out preparation, cooking and serving times for each course. Now, I'm certainly not saying I'm any kind of gourmet chef, or that this simple holiday dinner was anything as elaborate as Jamie's dinners -- but I love lists and schedules, and having this basic schedule posted on our fridge was a lifesaver!

Even with as much advance prep and planning as I could muster, everything was scheduled to sort of pile up at around 12:30 on Thursday... Good thing I had a faithful army of student sous-chefs to help out! Katrina and Victoria came over a few hours early to help peel and chop potatoes and put the finishing touches on other dishes, and then when the rest of the students arrived at around 1, we put a whole group of them to work plucking thyme leaves for the roasted carrots. I wish I'd gotten a photo of this particular assembly line -- Katrina, Victoria, Natalie, and Daniel crowded around the counter, coming up with ever more efficient ways to strip thyme... Thanks for all your help!

All told, we had way too much food... But that's a good problem to have, right? On the menu were the roasted turkey, a honey-baked ham (a panic buy on Tuesday evening, when we thought we might have as many as 18 people over), mashed potatoes, roasted carrots, wild rice and sausage stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, sweet potato casserole, green beans, and brussels sprouts (the last three brought down by David's brother Iain). Again, I wish I'd thought to get individual shots of the dishes -- but I'm afraid we were all too busy serving, eating and talking to even think of photos. And if I'm not thinking about photos, you know it had to have been good dinner conversation. :)

Eventually, I pulled out the camera and took a few shots of the dinner...








And then for dessert -- two pumpkin pies, two apple pies (one made by David's mom, the other by Iain's girlfriend Erin), and a cheesecake!


Yeah, so David and I have been living on leftovers for the last several days... It's all just as good reheated!

We're so thankful to have had the opportunity to host so many friends and loved ones. It's always so much fun to spend time with David's family -- and we love introducing PEFers to the stars of all the great stories David tells about his childhood and his family. :)




So thankful for each and every one of you!

Lending a Helping Hand

I was at the grocery store the other day, getting a start on Thanksgiving shopping. We're hosting David's family, plus a number of PEFers who are staying around over the break -- it's going to be so much fun! :) But since we live in a third-floor walk-up, we figured it would be easiest to get our Thanksgiving groceries in stages.

So there I was in Wegmans, picking out a turkey and getting all the non-perishable items for the big dinner. I was flying solo this trip, since David was tied up with work -- I figured I could handle this trip on my own, since it wasn't all that much to pick up, and I could get David to bring the groceries up when I got back.

I got to the checkout line, and put everything on the conveyor belt. Just another trip to the grocery store, waiting in line... My mind was occupied with schedules and plans for Thanksgiving prep. When I finally got to the head of the line, I figured I'd exchange the normal pleasantries with the cashier and then head off on my merry way.

Instead, the cashier turned to me, looked at my belly, and asked if she could page a Helping Hands assistant to help me carry my things out to my car.

I was taken aback. A Helping Hands assistant? For me? Just because I'm pregnant?

I tried to demur, but she insisted that she would feel a lot better if she could get someone to help me out. She was very kind and solicitous, not making my pregnancy out to be a disability, but just trying to make sure I'd be okay. It was a little embarrassing -- I'm not used to being asked if I needed assistance. And I didn't really need the help; I had, after all, gotten everything into my cart, so surely I could get it all out as well.

But mostly, I was touched. It was nice to see that society in general, and Wegmans in particular, values pregnancy and wants to provide support to pregnant women and their unborn babies. And it was also exciting -- I'm clearly visibly pregnant enough for strangers to offer assistance, rather than worry that they're about to insult a woman who just happens to carry extra weight around her midsection. :)

So I just wanted to give a brief shout-out to Wegmans, in thanks for this service. The solicitude of a perfect stranger for me and my baby really made my day.

A Happy Thanksgiving

Since David and I got married, we've rotated major holidays with our respective families -- Thanksgiving with one set and Christmas with the other, and then flipped the next year. So this year, we spent Thanksgiving with my family down in Raleigh, NC.

As always, there was good food aplenty:

My youngest brother Eric, my mother, and my middle brother David -- plus the
mashed potatoes and garlic green beans I made!


My dad carving the turkey; Eric always starts Thanksgiving dinner with the drumstick

And after dinner, my dad got to play master of the house, spreading his largesse to the lowliest members of the household:

Feeding the bones to the dogs: Puggy is the big guy eating from my
dad's hand, and Pretty is the slightly smaller dog half in the foreground

On Friday, we spent most of the day in downtown Raleigh. I spent most of my childhood in Raleigh, and know my way around most of the town, but I never really did any of the "touristy" things or visit any of the museums until I brought David home and got to show him around. My family got in on the touristy fun this year, starting with a walk around the Capitol grounds:

Me, David, my mom, my dad, and Eric, in front of the NC Capitol -- the statue depicts
the three US presidents born in NC (Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and James Polk)

And we capped off the day with a visit to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. Here's a representative sample of the conversation in my family:

MOM: "Go in front of that display, you three, and I'll take your picture."
**We good-naturedly pose, for the zillionth time, for a picture.**
MOM: "It'll look like you're really at the beach!"
**click**
MOM: "Oh shoot, I got the lights in the picture..."

Sure, it kind of looks like we're really at a beach, right?

All in all, it was an enjoyable holiday visit with my family -- I'm glad we could make it down this year!