Thanksgiving Highlights

This year, like last year, we invited my sisters and their husbands and friends up to our place for Thanksgiving dinner which means that I roasted the turkey and made the stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy. It also means that we got the best leftovers. I like to imply that we're having everyone to our place because I'm the one with experience roasting the turkey and as the oldest sister I'm willing to sacrifice my Thanksgiving morning so that everyone else can have a great day, but really I'm all about the leftovers. And I have to admit that it's a control issue too. I have this psychological thing about crunchy vegetables in my stuffing and I know that if I make the stuffing I can use my food processor to blend the onions and celery into nothing more than a paste. It's totally immature, but no one else really seems to care much. Then there's also the fact that my husband is a master at cleaning out the turkey, so I can leave that mess to him while I get the stuffing ready to go in the bird.

Last year was my first time roasting a turkey and I have to say that it was a major bummer. I spent several hours slaving away for a meal that lasted fifteen minutes. This year I was sort of a Nazi about making sure that everything was on the table before we began to eat. After all, if the meal only lasts fifteen minutes and I spend several of those minutes jumping up to open the can of cranberry sauce or grabbing something else that we forgot then by the time I sit down the gravy is cold and everyone else has moved into the other room. So dinner was an hour later than I expected and just as I was about to give the okay for the blessing, I stopped everything when I realized that the glasses were empty, but once everyone had their beverage of choice and the blessing was said people actually lingered over their food. And I since I avoided any sort of cooking for two and a half days after Thanksgiving due to the abundant leftovers, the several hours I spent prepping the turkey and baking pies was a great investment.

The other highlight of my Thanksgiving weekend was BYU's victory over Utah. In years past, I didn't care too much who won. When we lived in Provo and even in Pasadena, of course we wanted BYU to win, but those weren't BYU's best football years. Now that we live in Salt Lake City and I work at a Catholic school I needed BYU to win. I just couldn't bare the amount of gloating I was going to face on Monday from my students if we lost. These are the kids who erupted into loud and emphatic boos when I told them I graduated from BYU. At any rate, their victory was one more thing to be grateful for this Thanksgiving weekend. Otherwise I don't think I could have survived until Christmas.