Thanksgiving Weekend, For Real

I would like to preface this post by saying I love Thanksgiving. What’s there not to love: food, a parade, baking, family togetherness, getting ready for Christmas.



So when I was feeling quite agitated after this holiday weekend, I have come to the conclusion that I like the *idea* of holidays. None of these things that I enjoy about the holiday ever turn out the way that I think they will. I am the Clark Griswold of our family. I wrote a bit about this on my Macomb Patch post, but as I was writing, there was so much more that came to mind after I clicked the publish button.



In less than twenty-four hours of our family togetherness, Thomas was having a meltdown because Marie was encroaching in on his time alone with me. As we debriefed from his timeout, Thomas growled through clenched, “Sissy needs to go to school.”



Wow. On the bright side, he is very clear in communicating his feelings, right?



So the most obvious fix to this situation was to do a group project in which they would have so much fun that they would totally forget that they were feeling crabby with each other. Baking cookies seemed like a good idea. Everything was going great until I put in the flour into the Kitchen Aid Mixer, and Thomas put the mixer on full force. A fine film of flour covered the floor, the counter, and a bit on the pumpkin pies that were cooling. Nice.



Thanksgiving was good, for the most part. I went to my parents’ house to help them with turkey while simultaneously working on The Raw Chicken Dare. However, I walked into a power struggle about how to cook a turkey between my Mom and Dad. (My Mom has thirty plus years of experience, and my Dad watched an Alton Brown show). The bird was still frozen and my Dad already had his hands in the turkey so he just took the icky parts out. And I didn’t fight him on it because I froze. I just couldn’t do it. But I am no quitter so I took that herbed butter and was elbow deep in raw turkey as I spread it between the skin and the meat. I promptly washed as I was scrubbing for surgery. There was something distinctly more disgusting about that twenty-five pound turkey than a little chicken.



Decorating for Christmas has always been a favorite activity of mine . . . until Thomas thought the ornaments were toys and would. Not. Stop. Touching. The. Tree. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown, especially when he moved a kitchen chair so he could reach the ornaments I hid out of his reach (but obviously not out of his eye sight).



This turn of events escalated the power struggle between Harrington and Thomas to new heights. (Imagine hearing, “Don’t! Touch!” followed by Thomas making intense eye contact with Harrington as he reached for another ornament). I thought that I was going to lose what little mind I had left.



I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the intense discussions I had with Harrington about our vision of external illumination. I want lots of love and sparkle, and his vision has less . . . um, sparkle. But I think we are coming together on this since he bought more lights to fill in the wacky shaped tree in our front yard.



We ended the weekend with dinner with my mother-in-law, my sister-in-law and her family. It was a lot of fun watching The Babes play with their cousins. Since we were supposed to have a family photo taken, I worked really hard to make sure we all had nice, coordinating clothes cleaned and ironed. The picture never happened, but we all looked really cute, if I do say so myself.



So yes, I love the holidays. . . just like Clark Griswold.



Tell me all about your Thanksgiving. 

Because I would like to know that I am not alone.

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