What a glorious Thanksgiving vacation this has been. I can no longer call it a weekend, or an extended weekend, as I’ve been off for six days. I had off Thursday, took a vacation day for Friday, had the weekend, and took Monday and Tuesday off as well. Six days to recharge my batteries, and I feel very refreshed with a clear head.
Thursday
We spent Thanksgiving over at my in-laws, but my parents and my sister (and husband and baby) also attended. It was a big shindig to say the least. My wife and her sister cooked up all the sides, and others provided the turkey and other sides. My wife started cooking Wednesday night with a homemade pumpkin pie, and the rest of Thurs morning cooking. I tried to stay ahead of her by washing and drying utensils and pans as she moved onto the next dish. Thanksgiving was a great success, and we came home to a relatively clean kitchen.
After we came home and put the kids to bed, we watched Timer on Netflix.
Friday
We avoided all the Black Friday hoopla. As a family, we had lunch for the first time at our local Cracker Barrel. That was an interesting experience with southern cooking. I didn’t eat much, but I was stuffed. I guess southern food is inherently very filling.
We attempted to catch an early afternoon movie showtime for Tangled, but they were sold out. We purchased tickets for the 5:15pm showing of Tangled, but still had 2+ hours of time to kill. Instead of going home and coming back again, we decided to run some errands like getting Lily a haircut, and shopping for some essentials at Target. I’m looking forward to using our new can opener.
Saturday
A day of relaxing and cleaning up at the house during the day. In the evening, we drove up to northern NJ for a Thanksgiving dinner party with friends Sunil & Ligy at their house.
Sunday
As we got home late the night before, the kids were tired, Lily especially. While Nums and Josh went to church, I stayed home and Lily slept until 12:30pm. At one point, I had to check that she was still breathing, but she was just tired. A very happy girl greeted me downstairs when she finally woke up. The kids watched Sleeping Beauty again on Saturday, so maybe Lily got the wrong idea?
One of my wife’s friends was coming back to NJ Sunday night, but her ride fell through. Josh and I drove in the evening to pick her up from the Philadelphia airport. The traffic on the NJ Turnpike was pretty bad, so we were a little late. On the round trip back North, I took I-295 which was was a much better alternative than sitting on the NJT twiddling my thumbs.
We also did a huge cleanup downstairs in the basement, and we tossed out much of the kids’ baby toys and stuff we didn’t need anymore. We’ve been slowly parting with clothes that don’t fit us and the kids anymore, but there was much more downstairs that needed to go, no matter how hard it was. We got rid of kids toys, no-longer-used bookcases, my old Sony VCR, the baby bouncer, and all sorts of other baby stuff. We have more baby clothes to donate, but much is gone. It’s a big year for us, and we’re moving to the next phase of our life. Sadly, that involves parting with the things we don’t need anymore.
Monday
A nice day at home while everyone else went to school and work. I ran through a big list of things to do. I put together a table and two chairs for the kids to use in their room (where the old crib used to be), replaced burned-out light bulbs in the house, sorted additional old papers and junk in the basement, tied up and tossed old boxes, and replaced the wipers on the Toyota. The kids table was missing this one lock washer, so I had to make two trips to Home Depot to find the right one.
Tuesday
I wasn’t originally taking Tuesday off, but we had Josh’s first parent-teacher conference today and I didn’t want to miss it. My wife took off, so we made it a nice day together. Afterwards, we had lunch at Ploy Siam (thai cuisine) in Robbinsville. We had a coupon for a free entree there, but they ultimately didn’t accept it, as the waitress explained that the coupon that went out wasn’t “approved.” What the what? She did say we could use it again for a dinner for 15% off. Whaaaaa? Very odd, to say the least. We took it in stride, and enjoyed the food and the excellent ambiance. Later, I did some top-to-bottom vacuuming and carpet stain scrubbing. We celebrated with some takeout from our favorite wings place and giving the kids some well-needed baths.
Summary
In a nutshell, that was my Thanksgiving vacation. More photos, including others from November, are now posted online for your viewing pleasure. I missed two floating holidays due to work in the past two months, so I finally got to take the time off now. It feels great, and now I’m in the home stretch on my audit and the work remaining for the rest of the year. I still have a day or two in the works to take off before Christmas, and I’m still looking forward to the week off between Christmas and New Year’s.