Thanksgiving Twice

We were in California this year for the Thanksgiving Holiday. Mick had surgery on his knee and also had a lypoma removed from his right elbow the Monday before Turkey Day. He did really well, so as soon as he was alert from his anesthesia we headed out to the desert house.

This was Mick's favorite chair while recovery from his surgery. Notice the remote in his hand. He watched a lot of soccer games. I swam each morning and enjoyed my walks and Jamie finally made it out to California a day later than planned, due to snow causing her flight from Utah to be cancelled. She was with us Wednesday through Monday morning.

Even though it was cool for Palm Springs, we enjoyed the sunshine and blue skies of the desert house. The mountains even had snow on the tops. It was really a pretty sight.

We were able to go out to dinner with Ashley, my niece who is attending Pepperdine University. Afterwards we went to see the lights at the LA temple.

Since it was just the 4 of us for Thanksgiving we decided to go out to Marie Callendars for dinner. The past two years I've done Thanksgiving at the Desert House or St George and it was harder to do without all the big pots and pans, plus we had sooooo much food we ended up throwing so much away. I thought going out would be best, but......it was NOT THANKSGIVING to me. Yes we had turkey and all the fixings, but the yams were not prepared like Mick does them, the pumpkin pie wasn't my pumpkin pie, the dressing was mushy. I asked the waiter to take our picture and when he handed the camera back to me and I looked at the picture, I started crying. This is not Thanksgiving, I said. SO......

Since Thanksgiving was such a let down to me, I decided to have a big Thanksgiving Dinner here in Jersey when the family all got here. We had it the sunday before Christmas and had the Frugone's, Kathy and Steve Wilson, Cory and Sophie Grillone and all of us. It was great fun and was more like Thanksgiving with turkey, ham, pumpkin pie and all the goodies and smells that go wtih the holiday.

Fun activities included Mick tying up the boys, the boys tying up Mick, hide and seek, games, and trampoline time. Now this is more like Thanksgiving. A big crowd, lots of food and fun.