November brought the start of the holiday season and provided Anna the chance to get together with family to celebrate the holidays. The season kicked off November 8 with a trip to Ohio for Veteran's Day weekend followed by Thanksgiving in Virginia with a visit by Aunt Loren, Aunt Mary, James & Sundance.
Grandma's family gets together every year on Veteran's Day weekend for an early Thanksgiving celebration. This is a large gathering of extended cousins and can be anywhere from 65 - 90 people (no joke). Much of the gathering is spent trying to figure out how people are related. While it is supposed to be a potluck, Grandma and Uncle Rolland make massive amounts of turkey, potatoes, gravy and stuffing for the group. It is quite a feast. There were a couple of added adventures on this trip. First, Grandma & Grandpa's minivan was in the shop for an extensive repair. As a result, they only had Grandpa's convertible to drive (this is a bit of a challenge to get out of, let alone pack all of the food Grandma was bringing). Theresa rented a minivan upon the Friday arrival to accommodate the group and transport the food. Friday night was a big deal in Paulding, Ohio as it was a playoff football game - the first time the team had won a conference championship since Theresa was in high school (do the math on that one). Anna & Theresa walked over to watch the second half of the game (the team won but sadly lost the following week). Saturday was lots of meal prep, so it was decided to go out for dinner. The first restaurant, the Paulding Pancake house, was closed for a private party. The next stop was a restaurant in the next town over, but the wait was 45 minutes. The family ultimately ended up at Bob Evans, where Theresa ran into a high school classmate that was the manager. This did not equate to better service as there was clearly not enough help and may have been the slowest Bob Evans ever (it would have been better to wait the 45 minutes at the previous restaurant). After finally getting dinner at 7:30 PM (this adventure started at 5:15 PM), the conclusion was to just pick up a pizza next time.
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| Kent Thanksgiving crowd |
The Kent Thanksgiving feast on Sunday was well attended with about 70 relatives. Uncle Rod & Courtney, Uncle Tim & Aidyn joined the group and as usual Rod & Tim were the first in line for the food (family tradition). We had a flight home from Columbus on Monday morning but opted to stay at Grandma and Grandpa's Sunday night and leave early (5:30 AM) on Monday to make it to the airport. Since the government was still shutdown, there was some concern about flight delays. Upon getting up in the morning, it was snowing...a lot. Theresa assumed the roads would be cleared. They were not. What ensued was driving on snow covered roads at 45 miles per hour for more than 2 hours before finally reaching clear road on the outskirts of Columbus. As luck would have it, the flight was even on time. Somehow the family just made the flight and then proceeded to sit on the runway for another 45 minutes to be deiced. It was a memorable early Thanksgiving.
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| Thanksgiving in Virginia |
No travel was necessary for the actual Thanksgiving this year thanks to James, Mary, and Loren's willingness to travel to Virginia! Theresa was happy to pull out her trusty Cook's Magazine for some Thanksgiving dishes, including the everything bagel stuffing. This created some marital strife as Theresa picked up a bag of everything bagels from Lidl (stuffing does not require high quality bread). Joe, channeling his inner New Yorker, found this deeply offensive and went on a quest to find acceptable, fresh everything bagels (he eventually found acceptable ones that were in stock at the local "Call Your Mother" bagel place). Friends Klara & Fevzi also joined in the festivities. The menu included turkey, mashed potatoes, Aunt Mary's sweet potatoes, everything bagel stuffing (good reviews), cranberries (canned and an orange cranberry chutney), scalloped corn, green beans, kale salad, homemade dinner rolls, fruit salad, Turkish bandista, 3 kinds of pie (pumpkin, blueberry crumb and apple thanks to Aunt Loren who waited in a long line at the Whistle Stop), Italian cookies from Aunt Mary and a pumpkin spice ice cream cake (Theresa just wanted to try the recipe, which was quite good). Thanksgiving also happened to be Aunt Loren's birthday, which we also celebrated. It was definitely a feast! On Friday, we enjoyed leftover "gobbler" sandwiches and decided to visit Great Falls national park. The highlight of that outing was taking a picture for another family when Sundance decided to join the photo and posed with the group (we expect this will be a conversation piece for this family about the mystery dog in their photo). Friday night was pizza night, with Joe making homemade pizza surrounded by lots of pizza topping opinions to cover everyone's preferences. The family headed back to New York on Saturday afternoon on an 8-hour odyssey instead of a 5-hour trip. It was a good visit filled with lots of laughs, old videos and of course lots of food.
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| Great Falls |
Anna got some quality time working over the holidays and quickly gained an appreciation for the holiday rush. Apparently, everyone brings their family to the coffee shop over the holidays (her own family included who stopped to say hello). She has some busy workdays and was grateful to have Sunday off to recover from small business Saturday in Vienna, which brought even more people in.
It was great to catch up with all of the family members over the month. Let the Christmas season begin!
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| Anna in action at work |
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