Thanksgiving 2023

 Thanksgiving with the White Family! Journal entry excerpts:

Thursday, November 22nd: Exhausted. Utterly. Between 7:45am and 1:45pm the only time I sat down was on the toilet. We had our 17th Annual White Family Turkey Trot this morning. 27 people came! It was a fun easygoing run, although Jeff pushed it and ran an 18:40 5k. I managed a 23:47 with no warmup and on dead legs (36 hours after a 10x400m workout and after more than 2 days straight of moving/packing/lifting on my feet all day). Basically, I had no spring in my step.

We had a jug of hot water and hot chocolate packets and whipped cream for everyone back at our front yard after the run. It was a happy, quick gathering. One of the good things about the turkey trot is people come, run, and chat a little, but nobody lingers endlessly because it's Thanksgiving and they need to get home and cook. So it's quality over quantity of social time--my ideal! We didn't do paper medals this year because the move was hectic enough.

After showers, it was time to make Thanksgiving dinner! Starting at 10am, I was working in the kitchen for 3 whole hours. Jeff and the kids all put in solid appearances and did some good work too. Jeff spatchcocked the turkey, sliced the bacon, and mashed the potatoes. All 3 kids peeled 10 lbs of potatoes. Rose and Amber cut the potatoes and helped roll the rolls. Jay cooked the bacon and added the green beans. I boiled the potatoes, made the gravy, mixed the rolls, prepped the yams and apples, made cranberry sauce, and oversaw the kids' work, explaining how to peel potatoes with all 3 of our different peelers and checking the bacon and answering questions of "where is the ___?" so people could find what they needed in our new half organized kitchen. (We still have 4.5 boxes of kitchen stuff to put away, plus the basement pantry to move from our old house.)

Our new kitchen was so spacious, it was easy to have a lot of cooking projects going at once. I remembered how tight it was cramming all of those big pans of rolls and turkey and side dishes into our old little kitchen, and I felt luxuriously grateful for our beautiful new house.

The entire White family came over for dinner at 1pm. There were 15 of us total, and it was the most comfortable I've ever felt hosting. It's so much less stressful when there's enough space for everyone. I was also in holiday mode so I was happy. I was also borderline exhausted so I was stripped to my core self with minimal emotional capacity. All of these factors combined to make me relaxed, in spite of the kitchen chaos before the meal. 

It is windy and the painters' plastic on our windows is flapping noisily. I am not looking forward to having workers come and complete their unfinished projects in our house while we live here next week, but I am ready for cabinet handles, bathroom fans, and a painted exterior so the plastic can be removed! 

Here's my social media Thanksgiving recap:

Happy Thanksgiving from our new house! We moved across the street this week. Today we did our favorite Thanksgiving traditions: the 17th Annual White Family Turkey Trot in the morning, followed by a few hours of cooking, then a big dinner with all 15 members of the White family (amidst all of our boxes this year), then blasting Christmas music during cleanup. I am feeling extra thankful. 

Sunday, November 26th: After lunch, we were planning on scooping out the last of the trash and other items from our old house, but Jeff needed a nap. Jay and I wanted to get the move over with, so the kids and I went across the street and got to work without Jeff. We ended up taking 3 van loads over to our new house before we were done: 2 loads of stuff, one load of trash. Jeff helped a little when he woke up, but he wasn't feeling well, so Jay and I did most of it. It took us 2.5 hours! Rose and Amber helped with unloading mostly. Before we left our old house for the last time, I swept and wiped down surfaces with Clorox wipes. While I worked, I started to feel some bittersweet feelings of nostalgia for that little house that sheltered us for six and a half years. We all learned and grew so much while we lived there! I marveled at how glad I was not to be living in that smelly little old house while also feeling fond memories for all of the good times we had there. My kids were so young and soft when we moved there! Now they're big and teenagerish! It was a relief to get all of our stuff out of the old house at last. 

We had freezer lasagna for dinner. I baked 2 family sized pans. Jay had 3/4 of one lasagna all on his own! Rose wasn't far behind him. Teenagers eat so much. So. Much. 

I have already changed the way these drawers are organized, but at the time it reminded me of a restaurant!

My two perfect pies. They leaked in the bottom of my shiny new oven, so it smelled bad and got all smoky when I opened the door.

A SUNNY turkey trot?? So rare! These people are the cream of the crop right here. Even Luke, (one of our beloved runners from last year who's a freshman in college this fall), who was only in town for three days, came to run our turkey trot with us! 

I helped the wind a bit and ripped enough of the plastic outside the kitchen window so we could see out while cooking. I couldn't reach far enough over to get the rest of it off, but this was enough for sanity.

Three potato peelers.

The meal begins!

We put everything on the peninsula countertop and it was a two-sided buffet. Perfect for this much food. Our guests contributed quite a lot of side dishes.

Amber had the first big spill in our new kitchen. Those pomegranate seeds were so hard to clean up! I wiped that area five times over the next few days before all of the red splatters were finally gone.

The stars aligned and we got a cousin picture! This is kind of fun for two reasons: At age 9, Amber is taller than her ten year old cousin Tate. And since Tate was born one week before his big sister Layne turned one, they are BOTH ten years old for one week of the year, so this picture has two ten year olds in it.

Lined up by height, not age. Amber is the only one out of age-order: Jay, Rose, Layne, Amber, Tate, Grayce, and Cole.

The White family: it was excellent to have everyone here! This was a quick tripod picture taken on my cell phone with my handy remote trigger. We haven't taken a full-family picture on this side of the fam in years!

Mt. Adams in the sunset outside my beloved plastic-rimmed kitchen window.

Of course once the company left, I didn't sit down to rest. First we cleaned up the food. Then we kept unpacking. I did the books.

A swift Sunday selfie in the sunshine. I was too tired to set up the tripod again.

I love these people.

I get trigger happy when I have a selfie stick in hand.

We almost forgot our pumpkins on our old front porch. This guy was channeling my mood by the end of this move.

Rental house nostalgia--we lived here for 6.5 years, after all. That's the longest I've ever lived in one house in my whole life!

The more time I spent at our new house, the smaller our old house seemed when I went back to move more stuff. This was the front room that used to hold a couch, a piano, a shelf unit, and a TV. We did a whole lot of living in this 150 square foot room.

Front room and kitchen. Sniff.

The galley kitchen.

The room over the garage: the saving grace of this entire house, and mine and Jeff's former bedroom.

Our LAST LOAD! (It was all trash.) Jay was amazing during the move. He knew my shoulder was bugging me, so he was always saying "I'll lift that, Mom! I've got this." 

A happy ending: giggling cousins.