Thankful

It's Thanksgiving morning, we're pulling a last-minute Louie realizing that cooking two different-sized turkey breasts is NOT the same as cooking one turkey, and I'm frantically searching the Internet hoping to find some advice.

UPDATE: We figured it out. Kept the bigger breast at room temp and the smaller one in the fridge, still brined them both, and used the recipe Toddler Tamer gave me last year to once again make smashingly good turkey. Everything took longer than we thought it would, but isn't that par for the course on Thanksgiving?

We had a delicious dinner at my parents' home: Eighteen humans and three dogs. All ate quite well and had a fantastic time. We had Mom and R, T's parents, my sisters E and M and M's husband C (Einstein, wait--?), M's in-laws (including her BIL and SIL), another family who didn't want to have just the four of them around a lonely table, and one medical resident whose plans to sit alone and watch TV changed when my stepdad invited her. She remained fairly quiet until I said the magic words "I love Stephen King". Then she perked right up. And a partridge.... Ohhh, the mashed potatoes! Ohhh, the stuffing using my parents' 30+ year-old recipe! Ohhh, the three kinds of pie! How fortunate I felt to need an elastic waistband on my pants.

Friday had me in bed all day with a crummy cold, but I again felt so thankful not to spend it slogging through work and sucking it up. Much better to finish my book and have a toasty warm puppy there with me!

I don't care if it sounds cliche'; I felt so thankful this past weekend to have so many places to go, to have people who love me sending me messages and giving me hugs, to sing with my choir on Sunday, to spend time with my family, to have the things that I have. I'm very blessed and lucky and fortunate at the same time (someone pointed out that being "fortunate" means you earned what you have, as opposed to "luck"), and I hope I don't take any of it for granted. I probably do, but I try to allow myself at least one reminder a day of what I have.

And now we put in a scant 25 days until Christmas. How did this year fly so quickly?