This Thanksgiving we started a new tradition. Sage and I walked down to the neighborhood newspaper vendor and bought the "Year's Largest Paper." He had a good time putting 6 quarters into the machine all by himself. And Matt enjoyed scanning the Black Friday ads once we returned to the house.
Another big highlight that morning was watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. This was a big treat for us. Matt and I hadn't seen the parade in years, since we don't subscribe to cable. We use an antenna to get basic cable channels. And by pressing the antenna up against the bedroom window, which was quite the eyesore, we were able to get NBC for the first time! And Sage loved it! The parade had just about everything a kid could want. Singing, dancing, balloons, and familiar cartoon characters.
Just me and my boy ...
watching the parade from the comfort of bed.
Thanksgiving marks the first day of Christmas in our household. And I dressed the boys accordingly.
Sage is so good with Kale.
His new thing is to tickle his feet. He's very gentle. And Kale smiles 99% of the time he does it.
Sage will say, "Tickle, tickle."
A long-standing tradition in our house is breakfast casserole. We only make it twice a year. Turkey day and Christmas day. I owe much gratitude to my Aunt Sue for giving me the recipe. The star ingredient is a vegetarian sausage that goes by the name Gimme Lean. Found in your local Whole Foods or Sprouts.
Another non-negotiable on the big holidays is mimosas. Matt and I only polished off two bottles of champagne this year.
Total slackers!
After breakfast, it was time to open up the Christmas closet. (Yes, we do have an entire under-the-stair storage closet entirely dedicated to Christmas decor).
Here's the thing about decorating with a two-year old. The ornaments went up...and looked awesome. Ten minutes later, all the ornaments were on the floor.
In our house, we eat Thanksgiving dinner late. And we spend the middle of the day just snacking on appetizers. We made tomato-bacon cups and spinach-artichoke dip this year.
More decorating....
Every year we invest in one or two new high-quality decorations, replacing the junky ones from our early years. This year we purchased a Byers Choice advent calendar with 24 wooden doors that open to reveal tiny gifts inside.
I'm excited to start a new tradition with our boys.
Then it was time to prepare dinner.
Oh crap! I left my pie in the oven too long.
It shrunk!!!
Hee hee! Just kidding.
I got a huge kick out of the nutrition label.
Serving size: one pie.
Ok, if you think so....
Here is the real apple pie we ate on T-day. And I cannot take any baking credit for this. We had our big dinner catered. I didn't want to spend the whole day in the kitchen. I much preferred to play and decorate. So we had turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and pie supplied by some of our favorite deli's in town.
On Saturday, we met up with Andy, Lainey, and Sam for a long-overdue family play-date.
Saturday's weather was gorgeous. Almost 70 degrees! But did we put our house lights up on this warm sunny day? Of course not! We put them up the following day in frigid 25 degree temps. Kale tried to help. But was crying within about 5 minutes.
Sunday night, Sage stumbled across a boxed of stuffed characters from the original Rudolph cartoons. He wanted to share with Kale. But may have overdone it....
Do you see the baby in there?
Just wanted to throw a little shout-out to my parents.
How cute are they?!? A very good-looking couple. Some people think Kale looks like my dad. What a lucky little guy he is then. Truly fabulous bone-structure!
Fast-forward about 30 years....
Two of the most fun and easy-going people I know.
Love you guys!
And I'll close by sharing a fabulous update. My boss has agreed to let me work 4 days a week. This is a life-saver! This week marks my final week of maternity leave. This sacred window of time with my baby has come to an end and real life must resume. But....knowing I have every Monday off, makes the transition back far less worse. I have agreed to work 90% time, which results in a 10% pay-cut. And to telecommute for one hour on four different evenings a week (doing e-mail advising). This combination will give me one full-day away from the office each week. No more Mondays, as Matt happily pointed out to me. Monday will now be food-focused. Meal-planning, grocery shopping, washing, dicing, and cooking as much as I can for the week ahead. This way our 5:30-7:30 evening time with the boys will more enjoyable and not so hectic.We'll see how it all goes. I'm sure I will need some practice before I get into a good meal-prep routine.
