Four-Day Thanksgiving Weekend

It was nice to have two long weekends in November. It allowed me to get some stuff done before December creeped in.  

Thursday, November 24th

I had stayed up the night before getting the house ready for Thanksgiving.  I shop throughout the year for Christmas presents so I was able to get some of those wrapped up, so I didn't have a ton of wrapping to do when it got closer to Christmas.  I put a bunch of stuff away, arranged the house and did some vacuuming. 

We got up around 10, ate a leftover scrambled eggs/pork crumble, French toast sticks, blueberry bagel and grapes while we watched the first game of the NFL triple header, the Bills and the Lions.  I talked to Dad on the phone for a bit and got the turkey prepared and placed in the cooker around noon, so it was ready by 4ish.  We cleaned the rest of the house, did a little bit more vacuuming, cleaned the bathrooms, brought in the chairs from the garage while checking on the turkey every once and a while.

We started the rest of the food around 3.  I had Doug and Ben peel the potatoes on Grandma Karen's nifty potato peeler she let us borrow.  Doug and Ben seemed to be having a great time with it.  I got the gravy, stuffing and veggies going.  Mom and Grandma Karen got there early, followed by Trish, Amy and Ed and then Erika and Zac.   Dad was a little late, but food got done a little late due to not having enough space to cook everything.  I threw the rolls in the oven, got out the salad dressing, butter, jelly, cranberry sauce, silverware, plates and stuck them on the table in the dining room.  Ben carved the turkey.  

I told everyone dinner was done as the Giants and Cowboys game played on the living room TV. I turned the volume down so we could hear everyone talking while we ate dinner. We did end up chatting about funny things and yes, poop did manage to sneak into the conversation like it always does.  The food was awesome like always and it seemed like everyone enjoyed themselves.  Doug was a little on the quiet side due to what happened to him last weekend, that is another story, but not going to post it to the blog.

The third game of the NFL triple header, Patriots and Vikings, started while we were eating dinner.  I glanced at that a couple times while we chatted and ate.  Once we were done, I had some help clearing the table and loading the dishwasher.  I asked everyone if they were ready for dessert, and they all said in a bit.

Meanwhile, Ed got up and asked us to give him his attention.  He pulled out a small box and said some nice things to Trish in front of us.  You should have seen Ben's face, it was priceless.  He thought Ed was proposing to his mom.  He wasn't. It was just a promise ring.  I remembered Amy talking about it a few months ago.  I just didn't think Ed would do it at Thanksgiving...I figured he would do it in a more private moment.  I looked around and everyone, including Trish, had uncomfortable body language and faces when he gave it to her.  We knew for a fact that Trish was never getting married nor letting her significant other live with her ever again.  We did not blame her.

Everyone dished up some dessert while we watched the rest of the Patriot/Viking game. I think Amy was the only one who had to work the next day for Black Friday.  Everyone started packing up and heading home.  I told Trish to let us know when they got home, and we would be heading up to Bonney Lake for her birthday party the next day and most likely would arrive sometime around 2ish or so.  Ben and I actually talked Trish into taking Friday off --they don't get Friday off at the dealership, but we all thought she deserved the day.  Her birthday was on Wednesday, and we told her we were going to celebrate it on Friday.  She hesitantly agreed.  I thanked everyone for coming and Dad thanked us for some good food.  I sent some leftovers home with Mom, Grandma Karen, Dad and Amy.

Ben and I spent a couple hours cleaning, doing dishes and putting stuff away.  Once everything was done, I got cleaned up, we made sure we had everything ready to go to take with us the next day and we both ended up staying up way too late.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, November 25th

I set the alarm for 9:30 but we both didn't get out of bed until about 10.  I had to make Ben get up or he would have laid in bed for hours on his phone.  He finally got ready and ate his cereal.  I had some yogurt, grapes and half a blueberry bagel and got ready shortly after that.  I started taking everything out to the Escape and made sure I had everything.  I didn't want to forget anything because I make fun of Trish for doing that.  We got on the road around noon.  The rain was gross and when I got onto I-5 I got splooshed by a van because they hit a patch of standing water.  I literally couldn't see for like two seconds.  The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful thank goodness. 

We got to Bonney Lake and had to stop by the Walmart for a couple of the spaghetti and breakfast items Trish wanted for her birthday weekend.  We got to her house around 1:30 and Ed was already there.  We played marbles and I won all three games.  The best part was that Ed was upset because he lost.  Ben got up to make Trish her "dick" cake, German chocolate and coconut pecan frosting--it's her favorite.  We didn't have time to make it at home because we ran out of time. We played Telestrations and Amy played with us, we also drank our blueberry beer I brought back from Maine.  I told Trish I would bring one over for her so she could try it.  She ended up liking it.  I got up to make the spaghetti, bread and salad.

We ate, had a birthday party, opened presents - she loved the necklace Amy and Ben got her and the two different kinds of bike tire pumps for her bicycle. She was excited for the nice weather again so she can go bike riding.  We all learned how to play Skip-Bo again while Amy did the dishes.  I swear Ed was playing it wrong.  

We went to bed around 11:30. 

Happy Birthday Trish!  I hope you enjoyed your "dick" cake!

Saturday, November 26th

I got up out of bed around 10 and started making breakfast for everyone. I decided on a scramble of eggs, sausage, hashbrowns and scones with homemade raspberry jelly.  It was really hard to cook in Trish's kitchen because I didn't know where anything was, different pans, pots and utensils.  Even the stove and oven are different.  Trish helped me out as much as she could, but I told her to sit down and enjoy her coffee because she wasn't supposed to make breakfast for her birthday weekend.  Amy and Ben finally emerged from bed and came into the dining room to eat.  We listened to football as we ate.

It was a decent/dry day and I wanted to go take a walk, so I convinced everyone (except Amy) into going down to Orting to do the Adventure Lab - Orting Murals.  We put on our warm clothes and headed down in the Escape.  We found a place to park near the Central Park of the three separate parks in the middle of town.  I figured we could walk to the waypoints since most of them were within walking distance.  I chose to save this specific Adventure Lab because I knew Trish would enjoy the murals spread all over town. 

We went to the Silo waypoint first since it was the furthest away.  We walked along the Foothills Trail to our designated spot.  We found the answer right away and admired the silo.  Trish said she's been down this trail so many times and never noticed the silo ever.  We went to two more in the middle of town and found the answers for those.  We went over to the school and found the answer for that but could not find the "hidden" ladybug to save our lives.  The last one we seemed to not be able to find because we were in the wrong part of the parking lot to see it.  We thought the mural was missing but it turns out it was above the walkway, but we approached the storefront from the side and not the parking lot.  We were able to answer it though because it was multiple choice.  We wrote the Adventure Lab owner, and she wrote us back right away stating that she would check on it.  She got back to us the next day explaining that the mural was there, we just approached it from a different angle and would never have seen it. 

I needed a drink, so we stopped by the Safeway in Orting before we headed back up the hill back to Trish's house.  I worked on my laptop while Ben and Amy started Mario 64.  It's been a tradition of Ben and his dad since they got the N64.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Ben finds all 130 stars and defeats Bowser at the end. Trish exclaimed she was hungry and wanted pizza.  I went with her to Buckley to pick up the two pizzas from Westside Pizza.  This was my first-time trying Westside Pizza.

We drove home and ate pizza.  We played one more game of an abbreviated game of Skip-Bo and pretty sure Ed is cheating somehow.  Ed left shortly after to head back to his apartment.  Ben and I got our stuff packed up and changed the downstairs bed for his mom, so she didn't have to do it.  We packed up the Escape, gave our hugs and drove home.  Most of the ride home was fine until we got to Nisqually.  We took Mounts Road due to an accident.  We got home around 8:15, unpacked the Escape, cleaned up, took a shower, did some laundry, wrote in blog, watched some Netflix.  College football was not kind to us this weekend; both the Cougars and Ducks lost. 

Sunday, November 27th

Over the past couple weeks (some days with Doug's help) I was able to pick up all the leaves in the back yard.  The problem was it wasn't even our tree!  It's the neighbor's tree and all of the leaves seem to fall in our backyard.  It is not something I look forward to in October and November because it is a lot of work and I have to do it when it's dry outside -- sometimes I have to wait a while until the rain stops. 

We managed to bag up all the leaves and they had to sit for a bit until we had a weekend to get rid of them.  It was somehow a nice day; we had the truck available to us and Ben helped me load all 25+ bags into the back of the truck.  I swear there were over 500 lbs. of leaves -- but it might have been an exaggeration, but it sure seemed like it with all the work we put into it. 

We drove to the kingdom of dumps in Hawks Prairie.  We unloaded the recycle first and then all the leaves into the yard waste area and then got in line for the garbage.  We started out with five cans and Ben decided to yeet the other two into the dump bins.  They have served their purpose over the past six years and finally fell apart.  Surprisingly, we got out of the dump only having to pay $16 for everything, leaves and garbage.  It seemed like we robbed the place. 

On the way home, we bought three new garbage cans from Walmart. It's weird that, as adults, we get excited about new garbage cans and other household useful things. 

Sports continued not to be too kind to us this weekend with an OT loss against the Raiders but here was the brightside, Tom Brady lost to the Browns in OT in Cleveland!  And I was able to finish the Christmas letter and got some of the cards done! 

Next Adventure:  Christmas Tree and Pillow Day