Plenty To Be Thankful For.

Isn't Thanksgiving just the best? I love it. It's all just about food, friends and family (not necessarily in that order). No materialism, nothing really to be bombarded with by the retailers and the only thing you have to buy is stuff you're more than happy to have leftover for the following week. We celebrated multiple times this past week. On the evening of Tuesday the 22nd, our tiny little apartment was crammed full of some of our favorite people for a little Friends Thanksgiving gathering. Steven and I made salmon, as usual, and everyone else brought their own favorite addition to the holiday meal. We had some incredible sweet potatoes, salad, pie, cheesey cauliflower, sparkling cider and two or three very intense rounds of Catch Phrase. It was so fun just visiting with everyone. Steven and I love hosting and it's always a wonderful feeling to have a full house.

My school was closed on Wednesday and Steven had to work so I had the pleasure of spending the day with my family. First I spent a few hours at home doing a little baking. I made chocolate chip walnut cookies and some cinnamon rolls, which I put into small pyrex dishes and delivered to my mom's house, my dad's house and Papa and Grammi's house. I left some for us, of course. We all had fresh cinnamon rolls Thanksgiving morning.

I visited with Grammi and helped her make mashed potatoes then spent the rest of the evening with Tara and my mom. We went out for Mexican food and just kind of hung out. I was mostly just trying to stay awake long enough to pick Paige up from the airport. Oh my goodness, it felt like ages since we had planned her trip up here and I just couldn't comprehend that it was actually happening. I was the most excited. It was a late night and we were exhausted but still managed to stay up chatting until late late late and then I stayed up until even later (3 o'clock-ish) so that I could finish reading The Help. I paid for that one. Oiy, not the smartest way to start a busy weekend.

Thanksgiving morning it was up early to get the cinnamon rolls baking. It was so much fun to have breakfast on Thanksgiving with Paige and Steven! It was cozy and the house smelled yummy and the three of us were together and I loved it. The rest of the day was busy busy busy. We started off at Steven's parents house for a game of Shadows Over Camelot and an early Thanksgiving meal. Then it was over to Papa and Grammi's for a huge dinner and some Catch Phrase. We laughed a lot and I had a blast but was beat by the end of the night. The drive home felt particularly long.

Friday morning Paige and I were up super early for the Macy's parade in Downtown Seattle. We were both feeling a little apprehensive about the whole thing. It had been pouring down rain all week long and the idea of wearing a costume, walking down the streets of Seattle in the freezing cold rain was not at all appealing to us. We seriously lucked out. The weather was absolutely beautiful. We couldn't have asked for a prettier day. It was cold but clear and sunny.

Lucky us, we got to be trees. What do you think? Pretty cute, huh? I almost freaked out trying on the costume and having to put the head-piece on but I survived. I think it was probably a good thing for claustrophobic little me to see that I can still breathe even when I have my head stuck in the fuzzy top part of a tree costume.

Most of the time this fabric was in our faces and we couldn't really see much at all.

Paige trying to keep warm while we were waiting for our turn to walk in the parade. She's the tree that's sitting on the ground. I heard one lady walk by and say something about the tree needing to be watered because it looked a little wilted :)


I've already put dibs on these costumes for next time. I think the blocks are so super cute and they spell things out too. Like "Happy Holidays" and I don't really know what else, but they're just cute. I also suggested that we could be the people who get to just bundle up and walk around with baskets of Frangos and throw them at people. As long as we get to eat them along the way.

What a perfectly beautiful day for a parade! We had a marvellous time. We were dancing around and Paige was giving "high-trees" or "high-branches" or something and we were "tree-chest-bumping" every now and then and it was just really silly.

Oh my goodness. We were a total disaster by the end of it. On the last leg of our walk I discovered that I had lost an earring, broken a nail, sweated through every layer of my clothing and that my shoulders were bruising (possibly blistering) from the weight of the costume. Paige really was wilting by the end and had gotten so hot dancing around in her costume that her glasses fogged up and she couldn't see anything at all. Pretty hot, huh? Our hair was all super messy and we had both tucked our gloves into our waistbands to try to cool down a bit.

Pacific Place looking all pretty and Christmassy. We had lunch with Paige's aunt, uncle, cousin, Lindsey, and loads of her cousins friends. Paige's friend Beth was in town and was able to join us for lunch as well.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the city with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Robert. We bundled up and walked over to the Fairmont Olympic to see the Christmas tree display...

...and then stopped in Starbucks for our first holiday drinks of the season. Paige and I shared a pumpkin spice latte and a peppermint mocha. Yum. We aren't really into the whole black Friday thing but we mustered up enough energy to stop in Anthropology, Urban Outfitters and Forever 21 before heading back to Enumclaw. We were on the couch in our sweats by 6:30pm. And I'm pretty sure we were in bed by 9.

Saturday we had a quiet morning of games and tea and breakfast and then it was off to the Peihlers'. One of my favorite places to be.

We played Castle Panic and made Christmas cookies and ate turkey soup (so good!!) and then cozied up on the couch and watched The Polar Express. Definitely not my favorite Christmas movie, in fact, I'm really not all that fond of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed sharing the Christmas movie experience with the Piehlers. Parts of that movie are just beautiful and so, so well done. Tom Hanks is fabulous, as always, I just think the character development is a bit weak and I don't like the depiction of the North Pole and the elves. They're kind of creepy. Those are my thoughts on that.

And finally, Sunday. We picked up Tara from my mom's house and then met up with Nancy and Lindsey at Red Robin for lunch before going to see the new muppet movie. It was really cute! I just love the Muppets.

Then back to the house where Tara rekindled our love of knitting -- she taught me how to purl, showed us how she makes fingerless gloves and helped Paige remember how to start a scarf. It was so fun hanging out on Tara's bed. It reminded me of the weeks that Paige was living there with us before Steven and I got married. It's a silly thing really but we just felt right at home sitting there chatting and relaxing on that bed. Quite possibly one of the best moments of the weekend.

Then we dragged Mom out to the car with us and it was off to see The Help.

This was fabulous. Read it. Watch it. Love it. Back at Mom's we had dinner and watched Eloise at Christmas Time. Can't say I was too excited to go home that night. I was already sad that it was my last evening having Paige in the house. It felt so natural having her live here and it just didn't seem right when I looked in the bedroom the next day to see that the futon no longer resembled a bed and Paige's clothes and books and jewelry were all gone. I couldn't believe that it was already Monday and time to drop Paige off and (gasp!) go back to work. The work thing still hasn't settled in yet. I think it's just going to take some getting used to.

Did I actually mention anything that I'm thankful for? I'm thankful for a pretty glass kettle that makes me hot tea as many times a day as I like. I'm thankful for turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy. I'm thankful for sewing dates with Sue Piehler. I'm thankful for M&Ms. I'm thankful for pomegranates. I'm thankful for satsumas. I'm thankful for rice-socks and a microwave to warm them in. I'm thankful for my slippers. I'm thankful for my Grammi and my Papa and my uncles who laugh with me and show a genuine interest in my life. I'm thankful for a new job and learning opportunity. I'm thankful for singing and music. I'm thankful to finally be healthy again**. I'm thankful for sunshine. I'm thankful for cinnamon. I'm thankful for a husband who never fails to show me the true meaning of unconditional love. I'm thankful for my dear friend Paige who understands me better than almost anybody (maybe almost the best actually). I'm thankful for my mom who reminds me that it's okay to laugh at myself. I could continue but I'm getting tired and rambly... this could go on for ages :)

It was a fantastic weekend and the most fun kick off to the holiday season. We can't wait to have Paige back in Seattle with us again sometime in the very near future. Hope your Thanksgiving weekend was as great as ours!!

** Health update: the sinus infection (yeah, the one that started back in September) never actually went away. I started feeling really poorly again on Monday before Thanksgiving and even stayed home sick that Tuesday. I couldn't believe I was taking a sick day after only two weeks on the job but I just felt miserable. I was able to fight off the headache with ibuprofen everyday over the holiday weekend but decided not to take any on Monday to see if I was doing any better. Bad idea. I was fighting tears for the first two and a half hours of work and finally lost the battle and burst into tears around 3pm at which point my co-worker forced 4 advils on me and I called the doctors office and tearfully made an appointment for the following morning. My head hurt so bad I thought my forhead was going to explode. I think I was channeling Harry Potter. Anyhow, the doctor was great. I pulled my list book out and explained all of my health issues since September the 16th and told her that I'm certainly not the type of person to call the doctor for just any little thing and I was worried that after two rounds of antibiotics over the course of two and a half months that maybe something was just wrong with me. She suggested a CT scan and I'm certainly glad she did! She called me the next day to report that I have (had? this was on Tuesday morning) a very severe sinus infection with lots of swelling and stuck fluids, which would explain the unbearable pressure. SO, she prescriped me a much stronger antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory and I am feeling so much better! I haven't had to take any pain medication for my head for the last two days. I'm looking forward to a healthy holiday season after what has been a rather difficult stretch of unhealthy days.