Thanksgiving Shenanigans!

I woke up at 8am Thanksgiving day & drove over to Teeter & Chick's house in my PJs to watch the parade.  I had coffee & peanut-butter-chocolate cake for breakfast, just warming my body up for the gluttony that was to ensue.

I talked to my dad on the phone and texted my brother (we had just talked), and I skyped with my mom and got to see and say hi to my cousins, aunt and grandma, who are all enjoying a rented mountain cabin for the holiday.  It's the first time mom & I have video chatted, besides on Christmas last year when I was in Australia, and the fact that we can do that, and feel like we're in the same room, still blows my mind.

Then we all got dressed, me in a vintage inspired brown dress with the most adorable little half-apron AB sent me from Australia a couple years ago, looking like I just stepped out of the 1950s.  We made ourselves pumpkin-juice cocktails (with the pumpkin juice from Harry Potter!!) as we snacked on appetizers and watched football.

People slowly started to arrive - we ended up with about 15 people for dinner, with another 5 or so showing up after for desserts and games - and we started cooking.  Chick and I made the turkey (which, despite looking frightfully crispy early on, ended up perfect!) with a burbon-orange marinade, and I also made a fresh, from scratch, cranberry relish, cran-orange pecan stuffing, and ginger glazed carrots & sugar snap peas.  I felt very domestic and they all turned out happily deeeeelish.

We found the most awesome (and by "most awesome" I mean "absolute worst" and by "absolute worst" I mean "so very bad that it's so very good") Thanksgiving horror - you heard right, horror movie - ThanksKilling.  Oh yeah.  It was a deranged turkey killing people & stealing their identities and actually fooling people, despite the fact that it's 2 feet tall and feathered, into thinking it's a person.  It was hilarious and got us through our food comas.

Then it was game time.  Of course we played catchphrase, our go-to game, and then we played truth or dare on a friend's iphone, which sent us all into fits of giggles.  I had to look just slightly to the left of people when they spoke to me and melt an ice cube in my armpit, and all the dares were goofy like that.

Then we played Apples to Apples, and just when I thought people were going to start leaving, we got a whole second wind, second wave of people and ended up staying up til 4am (!!) playing Mafia.

It's ridiculous, really, who do we think we are, a bunch of late-20s early-30s jokers staying up all night?  Three of us crashed on the couch (luckily they have quite a large couch) and woke up around noon Friday, hungover and ready for Teeter's blueberry pancakes and a day of movie-watching.

We had a P-jammer jammie party; Teeter, Sean & I stayed in our PJs all day (a few other people joined us but we were the only ones in PJs), laying on the couch, eating leftovers and watching movie after movie.  It was a complete waste of the day, indulgent and wonderful.  Even Chick & Todd's two kittens joined us in the laziness.

It was a really fantastic Thanksgiving, full of friendship, laughter, ridiculousness and great food.  I hope you all had a lovely, thanks-filled Thanksgiving, and are enjoying a relaxing long weekend!

Today I am so grateful and happy for:
~ being able to spend Thanksgiving with these great friends (I wasn't supposed to still be living here!)
~ Skype
~ silly games & friends that are silly enough to play
~ a day where it's ok to be a lazy lump

xo!  n.