More in November – Thanksgiving

My trip with G to NYC was the second weekend of November. For the third weekend, we were all recovering (G and I from NYC, Cute W from helping M with surgery) and preparing for Thanksgiving weekend.

I find something so very satisfying about filling up the refrigerators in preparation for Thanksgiving. I took a picture of the downstairs fridge just because it makes my heart happy. And it’s not even the first time I’ve done it.

To help with the stocking up, Cute W had ordered a case of sparkling wine from where J was living in Italy last year. One set of host parents owned a vineyard, and they told us that we should be looking for spumanti from Trento Doc instead of prosecco, so we ordered something that at least came from the right place. I took this picture because I grabbed the case by the top too quickly and there was almost a Tragic Breakage Incident in the driveway.

We liked the wine but (don’t tell J’s host parents), we didn’t feel like it was so far superior to other wines that it was worth having to special order and pay a little more.

Speaking of J and hosting, J had suggested that we revive the Thankful Tree tradition in honor of having G in the house. Here it is shortly after I set it up. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture once we’d added some more leaves.

You may recall that as the kids got older, it felt like pulling teeth to get them to add their own leaves to the tree. Every season, after Thanksgiving, I’d put the leaves into an envelope and label the year to have a nice little time capsule, and the 2016 envelope is labeled: “2016 AKA the year gratitude died” because I was so disgusted that no one was showing any enthusiasm. So, not every “I’m thankful for. . .” memory is a super-awesome one, but then you get some really cutey-patooty leaves like this one from back before J could write and she just had to dictate her thoughts:

Thanksgiving itself was lovely. With only 12 people total and pretty short visits this year, it was almost too quiet, but that made it relatively relaxing. In order to have at least one daughter along for getting our tree, we switched gears very quickly into the Christmas season, but I’ll catch up on that next time.