Thanksgiving, the expanded version

We had a lovely Thanksgiving. It really started on Wednesday, which was Sacha's first day of vacation after two 12 hour days of student conferences. Wednesday was also Mateo's very first parent-teacher conference. We schlepped over to preschool at 8 am and spent half an hour going through a three-page list of different developmental areas that he's working on. It was impressive! The preschool itself is not overtly academic - the kids play and speak Spanish and do art and science projects and go to the park and such - but I was impressed by the structure underlying what they do. Plus, it was fun to talk about how great our kid is with his teachers. Seeing the way they are with all the kids there, I'm sure the rest of their conferences were like this, too!

On Wednesday night, we started the Thanksgiving extravaganza with dinner at my grandma's house. This year's group of family and friends seemed especially congenial and a good time was had by all. We had two new guests this year - Apa and my brother's girlfriend - which was fun. I'm impressed with both of them for spending three lengthy evenings with all of us! Apa spent Christmas with us last year and we were excited that he wanted to come to Thanksgiving with us this year, too.

Thursday morning was the much-anticipated Turkey Trot, which my sister and brother and I have been doing together for at least the past five years, or more. I know we started doing it before we moved to Portland, so it must be at least six years, now that I think about it. We all competed in cross country in our younger years and so it's fun to all run together once a year. This year, I actually managed to keep up with them! I was very proud of myself and think our workout routine must actually be working! It was raining the entire time, but that didn't stop us.

Then we had our traditional coffee and pastries breakfast afterwards, which was a lot of fun. We covered topics such as relationships, children, careers, how we would survive in a post-money world, survivalists with bunkers in rural areas, and other fun things. There was a guy sitting next to us who was pretending to work on his computer while not-so-subtly eavesdropping, which was funny. The Turkey Trot is one of the only times in the year when just the three of us hang out, so I'm already looking forward to next year.

Thanksgiving dinner was held at my aunt and uncle's house. My aunt always puts together a feast of epic proportions and then refuses to take credit for it! It was delicious and staggeringly large, as always. The pre-dinner festivities were filled with lots of wine and snacks and shrieking children (ours, obviously). They had a wildly fun time playing with their cousins and all the adults in attendance. Or, Mateo did. Natalia went into her normal crowd mode, which is to bury herself in my or Sacha's shoulder and hold on for dear life like a baby koala bear. She is in a very, very shy phase right now!

Then, we had Friday, which was dinner at our house! My aunt and uncle graciously provided the food (leftovers from Thanksgiving) and we added some things and everyone came over and ate and drank and played Cranium. Again, I give mad props to Apa and my brother's girlfriend for voluntarily hanging out with us for the third lengthy evening in a row! The Cranium game is becoming something of an annual tradition, despite the best efforts of my father, who objected to nearly every move made by anyone. It was quite funny, although it didn't prevent his team from losing. Mwaaaa, ha ha!

Finally, to cap it all off, we all geared up and went to Zoo Lights on Saturday evening. The zoo was mobbed, so we didn't get to ride on the zoo train, but we did have a great time roaming around and checking out the lights. Natalia, like her brother before her, really loved the fish display and even started saying fish ("fis! fis!"). She's been learning tons of words lately. Mateo liked just about everything. And, when we were heading out, we ran into my brother and his girlfriend again. I have run into my brother in some random places (most notably in downtown LA when I was in college there and he was on a high school band trip and we just happened to both go to the same mall and bump into each other), so I guess it wasn't too surprising to see him there!

Anyway, that was the weekend. Whew! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays and this year was no different. For all the love I have in my life, I am so, so thankful, and this weekend was a busy reminder of that. Now if we could only convince my parents and Sacha's parents to move here, we could continue the family carousing all year round!

Photos to come in another post...