Perfectly Pleasant

The wondrous joy of low expectations! Our Thanksgiving was actually quite a nice day, partly by design, partly by serendipity, and overall because I expected NOTHING.

I made sure we had the essential elements: active time, time outside, social time, screen time for the kids. We planned a fairly simple meal and I nagged gently reminded G to start the turkey early enough that we could have everything ready by 6pm.

Our Turkey Trot ended up being an outing with the boys' friend and his mom---we went "running" at a big park, racing from one area to another. Overall we got in 1 mile, quite interrupted, but I'm calling it "interval training". Bonus: my back felt great afterwards, so I am going to do 2 miles tomorrow.

The best/worst part? The kids became MONSTROUS at the end, all three hitting/grumpy/whiny. I let it roll of my back. I did not engage, I did not get angry, I did not get filled with despair that my children are terrible and our holiday is ruined. I laughed (which enraged them) and commiserated with my friend and moved on to the next thing.

Same friend also came over later with leftover pie and stayed for a beer. I don't usually like drinking in the afternoon, but I couldn't let her drink alone, so we had a really nice break in the day while the boys watched a movie. We will take them leftover turkey today.

Our meal came together nicely: G made a turkey (our first time) and it made the whole house smell amazing all day with all the butter and fresh herbs and citrus and beer involved. This was the one thing everyone enjoyed eating. We also had biscuits (fave for me and B), herbed rice (L's love), and roasted cauliflower (the kids put a tiny bit in their mouths). G and the boys made brownies from scratch in a complicated recipe involving a double boiler, and we had the aforementioned pie.

Since we don't do it often, it was actually special all sitting down together to eat the same thing. We went around the table saying what we were thankful for before we dug in. And then we did our usual routine, got the kids to bed, and G and I watched another episode of our show & I got to bed on time so that I could get up at 6AM to get ready, have coffee, walk dog, and be at work in time for clinic.

It helped immensely to stay off social media. Definitely need to institute that as a hard rule during holidays. No matter how nice your day is going, its hard not to compare to others. Its just...human.
We did stay in touch with family---we facetimed everyone we wanted to talk to.

I'm writing this during a cancellation+no-show break in the schedule. I may write another one if I have another no-show, I know I'm way behind if I want to get to 30 in the next 6 days (yikes!)