So, Thanksgiving break = 4 days of glorious relaxation and fun with my favorite guy.
Here’s what we did:
Wednesday
- Holiday decorating at work with delicious catered Mexican for lunch – all theatre lobbies (especially those producing a holiday show!) need to be festive during the holiday season, and we all know decorating and Mexican food go hand-in-hand. It’s practically an equity rule ;) Fluffing garland and untangling lights is totally worth its weight in tacos.
- Saw Argo at the movie theatre. One of the awesome perks of my job is a partnership with the great little indie film house in town whereby we get free movie tickets on Monday-Thursday and they have popcorn with real melted butter. Be still my arteries!
Thursday
- Thanksgiving mass in the morning. The reason for the season!
- Enjoyed a bit of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with my roommate Cristina and her husband, who is from France and was experiencing the parade for the first time.
- We ate our big Thanksgiving dinner at Mario’s, an incredible eatery in town. Their fancy-pants Thanksgiving buffet was fantastic. I’m certain I ate both my body weight and the entire cost of my meal in champagne, fresh crab legs, pumpkin gnocchi, and delectable creme puffs alone. And that’s not even including all the real food….lamb, salmon, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, various veggies and appetizers and pastas and side dishes and traditional Thanksgiving fare and the dessert table…oh, the champagne and dessert table! Bliss!
- Roosting, snoozing, digesting, cuddling, football watching – good games!
- A romantic sunset stroll through Highland Park.
- Saw Lincoln at the indie film house (cue more gratitude for free tickets and enter even more buttered popcorn!).
- Gobbled up generous portions of my homemade strawberry rhubarb pie and pear-apple pie with creme brulee ice cream!
- Lots of thankfulness for so, so many blessings! And so much food :)
Friday
- Slept in laaaate :) Perfection.
- Paid a visit to Stokoe Farms in the country. We played with the animals, walked through a forest of pines, firs and balsams hypothetically picking out our perfect Christmas tree, and drank hot cocoa and ate apple cider doughnuts while cozily huddled in front of a blazing bonfire. I may or may not have found, chased, and pet an escaped sheep, and my boot may or may not have caught on fire. Ted was kind enough to let me know before too much rubber burned off…oops?
- Did a little non-crazy mid-afternoon Black Friday browsing at a few local furniture stores for our (hopefully) future new living room furniture set. We got some ideas, which is all we really came to do.
- Shared some tasty MSG-and-sodium-laden mall Chinese for lunch.
- Dropped by Ben & Jerry’s for a delicious cone of ice cream while we walked along water and trails of the Erie Canal and fed the ducks some bagels.
- Went to see my theatre’s first public preview performance of A Christmas Carol with my roommate and her husband. We all dressed up, thoroughly enjoyed a sold out night at the theatre, enjoyed each other’s company, and a peppermint schnapps eggnog during intermission. New favorite seasonal cocktail = found.
- “Decorated” for Christmas (a.k.a. plugged in mini tree, which is all that fits in our apartment), turned on the fireplace app on the iPad (hey, you make do with what you’ve got), turned on Polar Express, cuddled up on the couch with plenty of blankets, turned out the lights, and promptly fell asleep. Getting old is awesome!
Saturday
- Showed off our city’s wonderful public market to Ted. We walked amid the aisles of farmer’s hawking their fruits, veggies, meats and cheeses, dined on breakfast sandwiches and split the world’s most epic apple fritter the size of Ted’s face at the bakery.
- Visited the beautiful Mendon Ponds Park and the fish hatchery at Powder Mills Park. Ted thoroughly enjoyed scaring (yes, scaring.) the 2, 3 and 4 year-old trout while I enjoyed throwing fistfuls of food pellets into the baby trout pond and watching them all flip and flop and splash for it. Apparently to scare pools of trout into scattering, all you have to do is throw your arms in the air and shake like a moron until all the trout are clustered on one side of the pool in terror of the strange human hopping around like a lunatic and bellowing “bugga bugga boo!” at them. It was blistering cold and snowing, but we had a great time.
- Window shopped the mall – when it gets too cold to walk outside, you just walk inside. People watching at a mall during the Christmas season is simply phenomenal. It’s amazing how much people rely on material possessions and money for happiness when we had an amazing weekend with a little bit of nature and free entertainment.
- Back to the theatre to see the matinee performance of the Sister’s Christmas Catechism improv show in the second stage. Audience participation, as always, is hilarious. Everyone needs a good few hours of laughter every now and then.
- Split a plate of Texas sausage, brisket, baby back ribs, cole slaw, beans, cornbread and rootbeer for a busy Saturday night dinner at Dinosaur BBQ, right on the river by the waterfalls downtown. It was great!
- Another relaxing night in cuddling, playing Snakes & Ladders and Scrabble, watching Ice Age Christmas (one of our favorites! Cartoons are so not just for kids!), and hanging out iPad fireside before turning in early :)
Hope your Thanksgiving weekend was just as wonderful as ours!
We have so much to be Thankful for!
