Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Nontraditional Thanksgiving

A while ago we realized that we weren't going to have visitors for Thanksgiving and we don't usually travel during the holidays and we would definitely NOT travel during the busiest travel week of the year and we didn't have any place to go and I would be in the middle of a 10-day stretch of working at the hospital. Taking this all into consideration, we decided to do a bit of a non-traditional Thanksgiving celebration. Mostly we wanted to save ourselves a lot of work and just enjoy the day together. 

Stacy had this great idea to do a "Christmas Story" kind of thing and go out for sushi on Thanksgiving. I said, "Hey! Let's see a movie, too." These were, of course, met with zero opposition so we planned on getting one of those huge sushi boats. You know, the kind where a colorful variety of raw fish and sushi rolls adorn this big wooden boat and everything is so well arranged and looks so delicious? The day before Thanksgiving, I called 15 sushi restaurants in our area, and by "our area" I mean restaurants that were still in our time zone. Not one was open. Not. One.

I won't bore you with the variety of plans we explored (I believe we eventually got to Plan E after A, B, C, and D didn't work out), but in the end we really wanted to spend a quiet day at home and then go to a movie. Plan E was us shopping on Thanksgiving morning for this (believe me, Plans A-D involved much better food):



Don't weep for us. We had very delicious meal. We could eat Mexican food and leftovers very happily for a long time, so this was a great meal. Enchiladas, rice, refried beans, salad, all topped with avocado and sour cream? No complaints around this table! We topped it off with apple and pumpkin pies and everyone was quite satisfied.




We also made homemade butterbeer. What a great invention, Ms. Rowling!


Scout had a fancy meal, too. She is happy and cute, as always.

We should have taken a picture in front of the movie theater. "Wreck-It Ralph" was incredible. What a great movie! At the end we saw that John Lasseter was the executive producer. For those who don't know, he is Mr. Pixar. It was his original ideas about computer animation and a complete devotion to his dream that brought us "Toy Story" and all of the other great films to follow. When Disney acquired Pixar recently, John Lasseter was placed in charge of all of the animation projects and "Wreck-It Ralph" had his fingerprints all over it.

It had an animated short. It had a great story. It had fantastic attention to details. It had wonderful voice talent. It made you cry in all the right places. It had vintage video games. If I hadn't known, I would have thought Pixar made this one. Seriously, we all highly recommend it.


There's something cool about seeing a puzzle out, ready for someone to work on it.


Here we are playing games together (we played Mario Kart and several board games). This is one of our favorite family activities. During a traditional Thanksgiving we'd probably be trying to roll off of the couch to go back into the kitchen to wash dishes and debone carcasses. This was much better. 


Snack time! We made bacon cheddar ranch puffs. 
We saw the recipe during the Macy's parade that morning. Very tasty. 
(No pictures of the parade, but we all watched it before lunch
 since, you know, we weren't busy cooking.)



C'mon! Bacon and cheddar? Of course Scout wanted some.



More games. This time we played Munchkin. This is a great card game that spoofs role-playing games. It is a lot of fun, and there are a lot of other versions. We are actually playing Munchkin Bites here, the vampire version.


Yeah, this Thanksgiving rules!


 Our awesome Thanksgiving and games from a different vantage point.

On Friday I worked at the hospital but I kept the afternoon free in the clinic so we could hang out the rest of the time. We got our sushi lunch on Black Friday. Shopping or Sushi?
Hmmmm. We'll take sushi, suckers!


It tastes even better after the extra 24 hours of anticipation.


One more picture so I can be in it.

We seriously had a really good Thanksgiving. We made a whole weekend of it and really enjoyed the time we had together as a family. We get to spend a lot of time together anyway, but this felt extra nice for some reason. All in all, Nontraditional Thanksgiving was great!

7 comments:

Boquinha said...

LOVED this. SUCH a relaxing day.

I've seen lots of pictures online of big families all enjoying the holiday together -- that looks fun, too, but since we're not near anyone and no one was coming, this really was so nice. We had some local friends who heard we were alone and were so sweet to invite us last-minute when they heard, because they didn't want us to be sad. In years past, I have felt that tendency to feel sad, but I really wasn't this year. This was super fun and I got to kick back and enjoy the day with my favorite people and our super cute dog. YAY for nontraditional Thanksgiving!

Boquinha said...

Oh, and I absolutely LOVED LOVED LOVED Wreck-It Ralph. Like LOVED. Super clever. I laughed, I cried like a baby . . . just wonderful!

Jagged Rocks said...

Sounds nice! We had a lazy Thanksgiving, it was fantastic!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a great way to spend the holiday, Stouffer's enchiladas and all!

Lindsay said...

Fun! Looks a lot less stressful than ours. I still enjoyed ours, just a lot of work!! Nothing beats good food, family time and games!

Emily said...

I felt a little bad for you when Dave read me your text but seeing this post makes me a little jealous. It sounds like heaven! Dave took the boys to see Wreck it Ralph but I haven't seen it yet...they were SO excited about the 2.4 seconds with Sonic in it.

J Fo said...

What a great day! That huge sushi plate seriously has me drooling! There is a bit of a sushi shortage here in Vernal. :) We had a really different Thanksgiving this year as well. WE were away from my family and I had to work a lot, but we actually had a nice day. We ate with some cousins and spent much of the day in pajamas playing and relaxing.