Yesterday was turkey day. Of holidays, it and the fourth of July rival as my favorite. I don't like the pressure of Christmas. Too much to be done and then much guilt that I'm not doing it all. Oh the angst. Then I end up feeling Bah-humbug. I do think that I will feel less Bah-humbuggy this year though because it is so much fun to buy toys! Christmas really is a holiday for kids. I think it's silly to give gifts to other adults... (there is the humbug in me).
Anyway, back to Thanksgiving. We don't travel for Thanksgiving. Neither my husband nor I like to travel much anyway, and then add in the crowds and the craziness and you can guess why we don't do it. My family is about 2000 miles away and my husband's is a good hour and 1/2 flight away. The last time we went to visit his family in the winter (2003) we ended up with a flu that we thought might do us in. Literally. In the few times when we were awake and conscious during the 10 days we were sick, he and I were googling things like "Flu and Chances of Death" and Google would tell us that "The "AND" operator is unnecessary -- we include all search terms by default."
Back to yesterday. We hung out. I took K with me to the store and then to get coffee. Then all five of us took a walk. N & K (3.75 and 18 months respectively) were in the double stroller and little T was in the Bjorn. We walked from the rental house where we are living to the house we just bought. We then walked to the park. All are very close to each other. After living on a mountain where you couldn't walk anywhere this is a nice change.
After our mellow outing, we came back and got the girls a quick lunch and T and K each took long naps. About 3 hours for K and 4 for T. The long naps were great! I was able to get dinner ready to go. Dinner was our traditional Thanksgiving Day Dinner of Fajitas. It's not a typical traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, but we've been eating them for about 5 years now. Lots of good stuff goes with Fajitas (guacamole, chips, salsa, rice, etc.) so it's fun. We traditionally do them sans meat, but you can easily stir fry some turkey if you want to be a little more traditional on Turkey day. Since neither my husband nor I are traditional we think fajitas will be a fun tradition for the future on Thanksgiving for our family.
After dinner we baked cookies and had some friends come over to help us eat them. I made a 5x batch of our favorite Holiday cookie (Pecan Puffs). I learned a lesson... 5x is almost too much to fit in my mixmaster, so next year I won't make more than 3x. I also learned that takes a long time to roll out that many cookies! Our friends who came to help us eat the cookies brought over dessert too so we stuffed ourselves and ended up on a sugar high. We still have cookies and cupcakes coming out of our ears. (Not good for the diet, but not too bad because I actually prefer ice cream to cookies and cupcakes.)
It was a good day. Mellow, low key, and nice. In addition, we have much to be thankful for. We try not to take any of it for granted.
In the spirit of this upcoming Holiday Season, I'm typing out my recipe for Pecan Puffs. Enjoy!
1 cup pecans (measure before grinding and then grind really fine--a food processor works well)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup softened butter
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
Mix sugar, butter and vanilla. Add ground pecans and flour. Roll in small balls and put on non greased cookie sheet. Bake at 300 F for ~45 minutes. Roll while hot in powered sugar. Eat mass quantities. YUM!
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