What a fun long weekend for this year's Thanksgiving! Genuinely one of my favorites in recent memory. Em and Jon were both home from Ohio for extended breaks, and we five Schwegs made our five days together ones for the record books.
I left work around noon on Wednesday and was still one of the last (wo)men standing. I took advantage of the free afternoon off to start decorating back at the Chateau de Liz. My solitary stocking was hung by the chimney with care...
...and I realized that I have an absolutely obscene number of Christmas candles. Oops. I blame the Jodester for enabling me.
Wednesday night was an early night for me, both to recover from late nights in Boston and to prepare for Thursday's insane turkeyfest debauchery. We woke up bright and early in time to catch full Thanksgiving Day Parade coverage, and held a critically important family meeting to decide on a trip we've been kicking around for months! Jonathan graduates in May, and we've been debating where our first full-family adult trip should be. After a very scientific process of elimination, we settled on (and I proceeded to plan!) a ten-day trip in early June! I can't wait to share...details to follow!
Dad and Jon prepped the turkey with aprons and appropriateness. I blame the large amounts of red/white wine and champagne we consumed. Why not toast to everything, when the family was reunited and we had so much to celebrate?!
Every year, whether they're cooking for just us five or for twenty-five, my parents put together an absolutely over-the-top Thanksgiving feast...and we always have the same dishes. At this point it's become a tradition to the extent that, if they changed it, I'm pretty sure we'd all mutiny and just go to Denny's à la Scott Calden in "The Santa Clause." After all, "it's an American institution!"
Just drink that in. We have, clockwise from top left, an insanely good pear-and-pecan salad, turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy (duh), my dad's fabulous wild rice stuffing (which is apparently the same recipe my Grandpa Wayne used when my dad was a kid!), corn pudding, and squash soufflé. Not pictured: the Amish apple crumble pie we waited til Friday to consume. HEAVENLY.
We wrapped up Thanksgiving with a heavy dusting of snow on the ground and a chill(y) evening of...attempting to Black Friday! Let me preface this: we NEVER Black Friday at the crack of dawn, much less at the new, kind of obscene, holiday-ruining "open at 6pm ON Thanksgiving" times. This year, though, we ALL happened to have Verizon phone upgrades, and Target was running an insane deal where the iPhone 6s was $200 off plus a $250 Target giftcard. We couldn't resist, so we headed to the local SuperTarget, where we waited in line, Jonathan almost broke his nutcracker trying to jump a traffic barrier, and we all froze a little. Upon entering the madhouse that was Target at doorbuster time, we headed to the iPhones, and they only had two in stock. WOMP WOMP.
With the luxury of being the only local Schwegchild, I lucked out and got to ditch the insanity to go home, pajama up, and digest and decorate (LOL, more like observe the decorating) with Mom in peace while the other three waited to get their phones, all to no avail. See, I'm the "owner" of our family Verizon account because my company offers a sweet discount, but my dad kept trying to give the Target guy his Social Security number (instead of mine), so we got locked out of our Verizon account altogether (oh, joy). All got sorted the next morning!
Friday was a heavenly relaxing day of, in no particular order: online shopping, more trip planning, and an eventual St. Paul trip for Cossetta's grocery store and Anthropologie-ing. With post-shopping martinis and wine at Salut, naturellement! We then headed home to indulge in another favorite Schwegfam tradition:
Homemade pizzas! We get crazy-fancy with these and are kind of snobs about using Cossetta's amazing crusts, sauce, and toppings. It's always so much fun to do and we, Em in particular, tend to get super meticulous about it...which just makes it all taste better in the end.
After dinner, we headed to "Love the Coopers" in the hope of a festive holiday movie...and were terribly disappointed. Guys, it's a super-downer! The ONLY good part of it is Diane Keaton's pretty house (and the O'Neill brothers, my ND favorites, on the soundtrack, yay!). I don't recommend it. Stay home and watch "Elf" instead!
Our extended Thanksgiving held too much fun for one post, I guess...since this is already a bazillion words long and I'm not even to Saturday yet! Stay tuned, campers!