Thanksgiving was a good day overall. Originally we were planning on celebrating at my sister Lori‘s house, most of the family was going to be able to be there. Unfortunately, Lori‘s family got sick so we had to pivot, which turned out to be easier to do than expected. Mom and I already had roast chicken – I am not a big one for turkey, so was not disappointed that we didn’t have any. Mom had the makings for stuffing, I had bought a harvest vegetable medley and was planning to make gingersnaps and Christina had already bought rolls and pies. So we all decided to have Thanksgiving at Mom‘s. One big upside to that was we didn’t have to deal with Thanksgiving traffic on the drive to and from Sacramento. It also meant less work to get done in the days leading up to Thanksgiving and being able to sleep in on Thanksgiving morning. It was a beautiful morning, and I was thrilled to get out and enjoy a long hike on part of Miwok trail. On the way up I passed some trees where someone had left crystals. Afterwards, I baked tons and tons of ginger snap cookies. This has been a tradition with my kids and I for many years. I was disappointed I didn’t get to make them with any of my kids, but the smell brought back great memories from when they were little, and I was excited that I would get to share them with everybody on Friday.
Later in the day, Christina and Javi arrived, and we sat in the living room with a fire going and played Spite and Malice, a card game we learned as kids from our Grandma Elsie. Since we had not played in literally decades, Christina found a YouTube video on how to play. We were soon completely engrossed, remembering why we loved the game so much. I ended up beating her both times…
We enjoyed our delicious Thanksgiving dinner, watching the 49ers beat the Seahawks. Poor Javi was a little afraid at all the yelling every time the 9ers scored a touchdown. Getting a few treats dropped from my plate helped calm him down.
On Friday, we met up with the whole family to cut down our Christmas trees. We’ve been going to the Reindeer Ridge Christmas Tree farm in Sebastopol for many, many years. Emmy was able to join us since she just had to work on Thanksgiving day, and Kieran and Kourtney drove from Marysville. Annemarie was the only one of my kids who wasn’t there, though we did get to catch up with her later on a video call. All told there were 17 of us making the trek to Sebastopol.
When we arrived at Reindeer Ridge the parking area was just starting to fill up, every year it gets busier and busier. It used to be that we were often the first ones there and it was only when we left that it started to get busy. We had the usual scramble around to find the right trees, afterwards enjoying popcorn as we checked out the goodies in the store, took a tractor ride and greeted the adorable baby goats. I think it was the warmest day we’ve had for tree cutting, I had packed several extra layers to wear just in case, remembering how cold it had been in previous years, but never even got them out of the car.
Afterwards we went to a local park for lunch, where some of our group enjoyed tossing a nerf football that made sound effects and others hung out and caught up. My sister Lori‘s annual Christmas tradition is buying sisters ornaments for each of us, so she handed those out as well as gorgeous handblown glass ornaments made by a local artist. When it was late enough in the morning in New Zealand for Annemarie to be up, we had a video call and everybody got a chance to talk with her. The only unhappy part of the day was when my nephew Theo had a hard fall on the ground and hurt his shoulder. Nata took him to urgent care to get it checked out and we found out later that he broke his collarbone! Poor guy. He was a good sport about it and I’m sure the pain reliever and ice cream he got helped as well. At least he has a good story to tell when he gets back to school on Monday!
Since I was in New Zealand during Thanksgiving time last year, I was really happy to be able to be part of this family tradition again. And yes, I am thankful and grateful for the wonderful family that I was born into. Every year that goes by, I realize how lucky I have been to have these amazing people in my life.