Before this year, I honestly never knew “Friendsgiving” was its own concept–I mean, when I had the idea last year to get a bunch of our local friends together for a pre-Thanksgiving night of feasting and games, I was naive enough to think that I had somehow come up with the most brilliant idea ever. Because, after all, if one day of feasting on turkey and gravy per year is awesome, then two must be even better, right? And due to last year’s event being basically just that, we decided to continue with the tradition this year as well.
Imagine my surprise then, to see a bunch of people on Facebook shelling out praise for this idea of a “Friendsgiving” and even my own sister re-dubbing our get-together this year as such.
Ah, well. Even if I didn’t come up with the concept, it was still a blast although it did mean we were a bit sick of turkey by the time the actual Thanksgiving holiday rolled around 5 days later…
This year, the actual holiday of Thanksgiving Day was spent with my family. (As I’m sure many married couples do, we have “on” years and “off” years with each of our families to try to divide our time as fairly as possible.)
I’ll have you all know that between our Friendsgiving and normal Thanksgiving, I personally made ten dozen homemade (like, from scratch and everything) rolls. Because if there’s one thing I can definitely get behind, it’s that there should never be a shortage of carbs at a feast, especially carbs that involve copious amounts of slathered butter.
Raven also enjoyed her fair share of food-loaded fun by trying a bit of mashed potatoes and lots of bites of her mama’s homemade rolls. The rest of the time she enjoyed being passed round and round the room as almost all the aunts, uncles, and grandparents took turns holding her (as well as some of her little cousins).
I have a sneaking suspicion it’s because people think she’s kind of cute.
The rest of the time was spent on a new tradition my mom started two years ago (when we did Thanksgiving with her and my stepdad last), which is decorating gingerbread houses.
Something you absolutely must know about me—I am probably the least crafty person in the history of the world. I avoid crafts and little intricate handiwork like they’re a contagious virus. Therefore, after putting a couple blobs of frosting on our gingerbread house’s chimney and halfheartedly sticking a few lemonheads on it for trim, I basically dubbed myself official photographer and observer of everyone else, thus ensuring that Matt would basically be decorating our house on his own, for the second year.
Sorry but not sorry, dear.
Other non-crafty people used Raven as an excuse to get out of frosting duty.
I think they were onto something…
And the best part of it all was that I got to enjoy it with a full five-day long weekend that only involved minimal amounts of grading.
Happy Thanksgiving, indeed!
Hope all of you enjoyed the holiday as well. Now I just need to figure out how to keep the baby out of the Christmas presents until the 25th…
