No More Turkey!

Well, I can't believe it's already more than a week since Thanksgiving, and I am just now writing about it. The good news: the turkey is all gone! The bad news: I have to start planning meals and cooking again.

Thanksgiving was a smaller affair than normal this year. For the first time ever (I think), we spent it at home instead of invading family. My Wonderful Wife did all the cooking, and she did an excellent job of it! I picked Mom up that morning and brought her out to our house for the day, and so it was just the five of us pitted against a monstrous bird and enough food to feed an army. But we held our own.

Mom held herself together pretty well all day, other than calling me "Bob" a half dozen times or more and the usual repeated conversations. I could tell she'd had enough, though, when she moved the remains of her apple pie aside and just laid her head down on the table. By the time I got her home that evening, she was completely exhausted and had pretty much lost all sense of where we'd been or even what day it was. WW had portioned out several pre-compiled meals of leftovers into "nuke'n'serve" containers, and once I got those put away in Mom's freezer and helped her get her evening meds and then closed up the house for the night, she was ready to head straight to bed.

We had fun over the long weekend, and for once made sure we didn't get so bogged down with household chores. We took the kids to see the new Disney movie Bolt, which I think I enjoyed every bit as much as Cat or Cowboy. We spent half of Saturday at a nearby park, walking the nature trails, skipping stones in the lake, feeding the ducks, and freezing our tushies off in the cold drizzle that started about a half hour before we made it back to the car. We had a blast, but WW and I have been nursing runny noses and hacking coughs off and on ever since. One day, maybe we'll learn.

WW and I actually got to extend our long weekend by taking a rare day of vacation on Monday. It was quiet without the kids, but nice — we just don't get to spend that many daylight hours with just the two of us. We gorged ourselves on shrimp and crawfish at Pappadeaux's, one of our favorites. And we did make a pretty good dent in the Christmas shopping. Unfortunately, the reprieve didn't last, and we found ourselves back at the daily grind all too soon.

This weekend is already flying by, with laundry and cleaning taking up their normal chunks of our Saturday and me back at Mom's for half the day. At least we still have one more day to try to rest up for the coming week, which promises to be a busy one: the kids have their Christmas programs at school this week. On two separate nights. I'm hoping the homework assignments will be lighter than normal this week, or we may never get any sleep.

So that was our week. What did you do fun this weekend or over Thanksgiving?

PS — Don't worry. I'll get back to posting less words and more pictures by Monday. Have a great weekend!