So I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
We had a great one. This was our third year of hosting all our friends in Boston, and it was a blast. Basically, everyone brings food, we have a marvelous feast, then we play board games until our brains give out from the turkey coma.
I don't think a holiday is much of a holiday unless you have a crowd. I like to be surrounded by people on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, etc. We had 10 people this year, and I think it turned out great. That is about the maximum number we can seat comfortably, anyway. We put the second leaf in the dining room table, put the kitchen table in the dining room, too, borrowed a chair or two, and we were set.
I made a 16+ lb. turkey. I always brine my turkey (for a full discussion, see post below), and I've never had a bad turkey, so I am a big believer in brining now. I have to say, though, that without Nathan's help when it came to manhandling that bird, I don't think I could have done it all at 8 months pregnant! I held up pretty well, though. We got up at 5:30 to put that sucker in the oven, and by the time our guests started arriving, my back was already killing me! But sitting down to eat helped (or maybe it was the food...).
Nathan was a lot of fun this year--he came home the day before Thanksgiving so excited about all the food and getting ready. He even made Hershey Bar Pie, which he always loved eating at his house, and I really have to say that it was the major hit at the dessert table, along with Caleb's apple pie. I think even my quadruple chocolate cake was dwarfed by the glory of that Hershey Bar Pie. I know I ate way too much of it.
Speaking of eating too much, considering how exhausted we both were when all our guests left, we stayed up SO LATE! Like 1am, people! So we were sitting there watching bad movies at 1am, and I said, "How in the world are we still awake?" And Nathan said, "I think it's all that sugar." Ha! I think he must have been right.
Anyway, something did happen that we thought was hilarious. You may not think it's all that funny, but I'm telling you anyway, because it is a long-running family joke. Nathan and I received a gigantic turkey platter as a wedding gift. I mean, this thing is huge. You could literally use it as a sled instead of a platter. Literally. Just imagine it with me. It's got to be 2.5 or 3 feet across, AND, to make it even that much cooler, it is in the shape of a turkey. I have no idea at this point who gave us this gigantic turkey platter, but I have to thank them again for no other reason than that its existence has entertained us for nearly four years. Nathan's parents thought it was especially funny, and we always joke about the huge turkey platter. In fact, it's so big that we have never really had the room for it. But Mama & Papa B. brought it with them to Boston when they came this summer kind of as a joke, like, "Well, now you have the room, and I am SURE you'll use this . . . maybe as a sled." So we stuck it in a corner. But the funny thing is that this year we DID use it! And it worked great! Here's a picture of the beautifully sliced turkey on our famed turkey platter:
And that, folks, is my funny Thanksgiving story.
In case you didn't think that one was funny enough, let's try this one:
My mom is a character. She is always the life of the party, which is usually fun, because she is kind of silly. Last Christmas, we reluctantly participated in a Christmas auction, in which she auctioned off all her teacher gifts and other random things for the needy. Now, this doesn't sound very entertaining, but with my mom running it, it had its entertaining moments. Or dramatic moments, to say the least. So this year, for Thanksgiving there in Texas, they joined up with a branch of the family for dinner. Ken and Meredith also drove in for the day. So Amy, my cousin, was talking to her long-distance boyfriend on the phone, and upon Mom's suggestion, they made a little video to send this guy. And would you like to know what it was of? Of course you would. Well, Mom taught her students America the Beautiful in sign language recently. So she stood in front of the couch, everyone else sat on it or stood behind it singing, and she did the sign language. They all acted very serious and patriotic; Ken even had his hand over his heart. And Mom signed America the Beautiful. Don't you wish you could have seen that? This was Meredith's first Williams holiday, and apparently she kept waiting for someone to tell her that this was a joke, that we don't really do things like this. Oh no, Meredith. That was no joke.
So that was our Thanksgiving, both the one we had and one of the ones we missed.
Today, Nathan and I took it easy. We were pretty tired from yesterday. We did get out and take a walk around Fresh Pond, though. This is a pond/reservoir about half a mile from our house, and it's really nice because they've kept the surrounding park woodsy and natural. So we went and hiked around for a bit today. It felt good to get out for a bit, but I do have to say it was really cold, especially when the wind blew. By the time we got back, our chins were numb. :)
Incidentally, I ran across
this nifty tidbit about Fresh Pond recently. I thought it was neat. Just another nifty thing about the area we live in that has historical value that I didn't know about until now.
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving, too!
