The Thanksgiving 2007 Wrap-Up

Well, it has been an wonderfully enjoyable couple of days. We actually had two Thanksgivings this year- one on the actual day with our Chinese friends, and another on Saturday with the ex-patriate crowd in the city.

This year we were very excited to learn that the Metro in town was selling turkeys. We bought one on Monday, but it turned out to be bad. So, late Wednesday night I headed back out to Metro to buy a replacement. Of course, now we had less than 12 hours to get the thing defrosted. Ended up that I stayed up all night defrosting the turkey. We put it in the sink and every 30 minutes I flipped it and changed the water. It was a very long night, but I made a pot of coffee and took some time to do something totally brainless, but nonetheless amusing: play a computer game and watch movies. About 7am, I woke Jenny up and had her take over. Then I promptly crashed out for about 4 hours. Around 11a I finally got up, but the house was empty. Jenny and one of our friends were out shopping, and Gracie was out playing with the Bao Mu. But, the turkey was in the oven and smelled great.

Jenny and our friend came back and we all started cooking. I made my first corn casserole, which turned out really well. Another of our Chinese friends came and helped cook as well. About 2:30, our friends started to show up. We had 13 people total I think, and tons of great food. Turkey, corn casserole, cranberry relish, potatoes, stuffing, broccoli casserole, pumpkin pies, etc. All the fixings. It amazed me we were able to have so many Thanksgiving staples here. Jenny is such a good hoarder though, she held onto stuff for several months just for this meal. The meal was great. Boys sat at one table and girls at another.

At around 5, people started to go home. Grace was begging to watch some TV, so I took her back to the bedroom. As she watched her Barbie movie (for about the 10th time) I promptly crashed out yet again. I woke up around 8pm, just after Jenny saw off the remainder of our friends. It was a great day overall. I wish I had been more, well, uh... awake for the party, but in the end it was still a great day. Jenny and I closed the day out with a hearty game of Scrabble. (Jenny won by six points, but I payed her back the following night with a decisive victory.)

Saturday we immediately went back into cooking mode. Jenny made turkey and another pie in addition to a few other things. I headed out to the foreigner party a bit early to drop stuff off while we were waiting for the turkey to finish. The spread at this party was huge. Everyone was required to bring two dishes and they had a good mix of everything. Someone even had the...audacity to bring dog. (A big delicacy to the Chinese. I don't think anyone ate it, and most of us were offended by it's presence there) I got there right about 12pm, but had to go back for the turkey a few minutes later. So, by the time I got back everyone had dug in. All the deviled eggs were gone (a big highlight for me on Thanksgiving) as were most of the potatoes and sweet potato casserole, but oh well. I asked someone to cut me a few pieces of pumpkin pie (the ones Jenny had made) so I could at least get some of that Jenny and Grace showed up later, but by then the everyone was just about done eating.

After the meal the guys played football. I hesitantly agreed to join them, at Jenny's urging. We played for about 3 hours, and afterwards I was so sore I could hardly walk. Of course, that was nothing compared to how I feel today. I did manage a few catches and even scored a td. Not bad for the old man, eh? We invited some friends back to our house that night and put up the Christmas tree.

All in all a great Thanksgiving! Hope everyone out there also had a terrific and blessed day. We are so thankful to have enjoyed such great food and great fellowship.