WE'RE ALIVE!

Yeah, I know. We're the worst bloggers on the planet. I apologize to our loyal readers (of which we have 2) for the extended silence. I wish I could say we were off doing awesomely awesome things that just didn't give us a single minute to record it all...but that was not the case. I really think life over here has become so routine that we don't think there's anything remarkable worth posting anymore. I don't say that in an Eeyore kind of way, I just mean that Saudi has become the new normal, so I don't find myself saying, "Ooh! I need to write a blog post about this!" nearly as often.

To bring you all up to speed, I've compiled a list of the top 10 coolest things we've done since November 19th.

10. We hosted Thanksgiving at our house again.

We used Alton Brown's recipe for roasted turkey, same as last year. I think I'd go so far as to say that this year's bird was even better than last year's! We figured out how to take the giblets out of the bird before putting it in the oven. Funny how that produces better results. And, as an added bonus, we actually had a roasting pan this year as opposed to a cookie sheet with a broiler plate on top.

As was the case last year, we had a very diverse Thanksgiving. We had delegations from England, China, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Iran this year. Along with all the regular Americans, of course.

We even had a feline guest! Escobar, the homeless kitty, came with one of our guests who was hoping he would win the heart of someone living in our house. Unfortunately for Escobar, it was no dice. With most of us looking for a new home ourselves, we just couldn't commit to taking in a stray that would just need to be re-homed again in a few months.

After the dinner, we were able to hook up to a website that streams football games and we watched the Lions vs. the Packers while enjoying a little hookah. That was one Thanksgiving tradition I could definitely see becoming a yearly thing!

9. It finally got cold enough to wear a jacket

.

The date was November 26th, to be exact. We'd spent Thanksgiving with the doors and windows wide open to catch the nice warm breeze. And two days later we walked out and had to grab some warmer clothes before heading to the car.

8. We got one day off from school...for a rain storm that never came.

November 27th was an even more brisk day, so I shouldn't have been shocked when at 10pm that night I got a text message from a colleague telling me school had been cancelled for the next day.

"What?! Why?!"

"Forecast calls for a big rainstorm."

That's right. There was the prediction that it was going to rain. So they called off school. Works for us! All our teacher friends will agree that a day off is a day off, you don't question the system. You just turn off your alarm and enjoy the wonders of sleeping in on a week day.

When I finally woke up around 9 am the next day, I listened for the sound of car tires slushing through puddles outside.

...and I heard nothing.

It finally did rain, but not until 3 or 4 o'clock, when we would have been out of school anyway. I imagined our school administration collectively rolling their eyes as they made it clear to everyone that, rain or shine, we would be going to school the next day.

Here's a video of the deluge:

7. Ironically, we got a cat.

No offense to Escobar, who was a perfectly lovely guest cat, but Kitty has been working her wiles on me for about a year. She was living in the school yard of the girls school, and a colleague decided to capture her, get her spayed, and try to find her a home. So the Mister and I are fostering her until she can find a place to live permanently.

Of course, with a face like this, we're not in a big hurry to give her away. Who knows. If we find a new home in a country that doesn't have crazy strict pet immigration laws, we might just take her with us.

6. I went to the States...for a week.

Yep. In the middle of the quarter, I flew to Charleston to see one of my best friends in the world get married. It took 24 hours of travel both ways, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

First of all, it was just really nice to get out of the Kingdom again. And to get to spend a week in one of my most favorite places on Earth just made it that much nicer.

Of course, the company was none too shabby, either. These are my 3 best friends. We lived together for 2 years in college in Charleston. Courtney, the other brunette, was the bride.

Here she is, signing her life away!! Can you believe this was less than an hour before her vows!? She looked so calm!

She was absolutely beautiful in her wedding gown, which fit her like a glove. The DJ was awesome and played some Spring Street dance party classics! It's amazing how after all these years I still know every word to hits such as "My Humps," and "Drop It Like It's Hot." That was one night I was so sad to see come to an end.

One perk of getting to spend a little more time in Charleston after the wedding: reuniting with my long lost love. Going to college in Charleston was much more than just getting a degree. I think every College of Charleston grad forms a relationship with the city itself. I have so many memories all over that city and I had a great time strolling around the Battery and through the Market with 2 of my best friends.

No visit to Charleston is complete without a photo shoot in front of the pineapple fountain!

...and a few lazy minutes on the swings at the harbor park.

5. We turned old.

With our birthdays being just 4 days apart, the Mister and I share the celebration. In high school, we took ourselves out to an expensive dinner (more than FIFTY bucks!! That was high society for two high school seniors!).  In college, one of us would make the road trip to the other and we'd go on a date (or...a dinner between two friends for those years we weren't dating each other but were still very much in love). This year, since we're grown and far away from family, we rented a hotel room for a night and had a little staycation in Bahrain.

We've been Christmas babies our entire lives, but it's funny how living here makes us forget about the season. We walked in to the hotel lobby with just 10 days to go before Christmas and were like little kids when we saw the huge Christmas tree all lit up.

We still took ourselves out to a nice dinner and had a great time watching the Food Network (in English!!) and Ninja Warrior (dubbed, but still awesome) while sitting around in fluffy hotel robes.

4. We discovered the Friday Brunch

And it has BACON! Part of our birthday weekend was full-on gluttony. We had heard about the Friday brunch from some friends in Saudi Arabia and decided to add it to our celebration agenda.  Boy howdy are we glad we did!!

It's an all-you-can-eat buffet with lots of international flair. Most of the big hotels in Bahrain have a brunch, and we were very impressed with our first experience. There was an egg station, a waffle station, sushi, hot dishes, and oh the desserts! So decadent!

This brunch was definitely worth the cost. In fact, we enjoyed brunching so much that we went back this past weekend, and took a housemate with us! I smell a monthly tradition forming!!

3. We went to a fantastic Christmas party.

The weekend before Christmas a couple of our friends invited us to their Christmas dinner. Being that we live in Saudi Arabia and they live in Narnia (at least that's what we call it, it's so different from the Magic Kingdom!), we gladly accepted their invitation. We were eager to have the chance to get a little bit of the holiday spirit before it was packed away again for another year. 

After a wonderful meal and a rousing round of "The Twelve Days of Christmas," we had a secret Santa, complete with the jolly old elf himself! Then we played some games and just enjoyed each other's company. It was so nice to get to let loose with a bunch of adults for a little while.

2. I started scrapbooking again.

While in Charleston, I stocked up on scrapbooking supplies and brought home the thousands of photos I'd ordered through Snapfish (that my mother was kind enough to ship to me in Charleston!). I figured I have TONS of free time over here, I might as well start recording some of these memories. I confess, I'm really making this scrapbook for posterity (although, isn't that always why one makes a scrapbook). It's really important to me that our kids, if we have any, see what we were like before they were born. That it's ok to take a few years between the wedding and the kids and have a great time with your spouse. And that their parents actually did do fun and adventurous things once upon a time.

It's been fun to scrapbook again. I didn't realize how many things I'd forgotten and how FAT we were when we first moved to Saudi Arabia! That was a nice unintentional side effect of scrapping! I now have a "before" photo, and I didn't even realize it!

1. We celebrated Christmas, expat style.

Being that we live in the land of Islam, Christmas was just a regular work day for us. Honestly, I'm fine with that. We moved here to engross ourselves in another culture, and Christmas is not a part of that culture. I didn't expect to have Christmas off when we moved here, so while I was a little weirded out to be working, it wasn't that bad. By the time we got home from work, our families were waking up in America. So we put on our Christmas pajamas (given to us, as is tradition, by my parents on Christmas Eve), took a quick nap, and woke up to skype with the fam!  It was just like the real thing!

Of course, the real thing has significantly less awkward pauses and garbled words because of the hiccups in the internet...but it was still nice to see some familiar faces and to open presents at the same time as our families.

Vicariously yours,

Featured Photo: Happy Thanksgiving!

We went shopping for our Thanksgiving food supplies after school today. We found just about everything we needed, even the slippery jellied cranberry sauce. I especially liked the categorization our local grocer decided to use when finding a shelf for the seasonal item.

Vicariously yours,

"You call it 'Independence Day'? Why?"

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you," my supervisor cheerfully sang as she entered the room for the workshop I was leading today. I was handing out materials for the day's session and the ladies I was standing next to said, "It's your birthday!?"

"No, it's not my birthday today," I laughed.

"Then who is she singing to?"

"It's July 4th! It's America's birthday," I said with a little bounce and a smile.

"Oh," they replied, totally unexcited.

It should come as no surprise that the United States and its foreign policy is not very popular here. I've found that most of my colleagues have a perception of life in the States and there is not a whole heck of a lot I can do to refute their flawed logic. Even my students who have traveled to the States feel they are better versed at the ways of the West than I am.

"Americans think we're terrorists, teacher."

"No they don't."

"YES THEY DO! You don't understand!"

So I made an effort not to be the obnoxious American today. I haven't sung "God Bless America" or "The Star Spangled Banner" yet. I didn't wear any articles of clothing resembling the Stars and Stripes in pattern or color scheme (I did wear an old Tennessee State University t-shirt. Gotta rep my home turf somehow!) I didn't make a big deal about the fact that I've NEVER had to work or go to school on July 4, even when I was a waitress in high school and college. I didn't lament the fact that there will be no fireworks, no cookouts, no sparklers for me today. I haven't eaten a single hot dog or corn on the cob.

What I did do today was lead a workshop on pacing guides and how to use them. Then I went to a curriculum planning meeting for the social studies class I have been handed for next year. I came home after work and took a nap. Now I'm about to watch old "How I Met Your Mother" episodes online with my husband and try to scrounge up a decent dinner from the paltry pantry we've got.*

Most uneventful July 4 ever. It's very bizarre.

Save some fireworks for us.

Vicariously yours,

*summer vacation is on the near horizon. We're trying to avoid grocery shopping in an effort to use what we've got and minimize food waste. Translation: we're eating a lot of beans, pasta, and frozen shrimp.

Happy ANZAC

This weekend, the Mister and I lived the compound life. I've made friends with a lady who lives on one of the compounds not too far from our house. She's British and her husband works for a British company. This weekend, they invited us out to celebrate ANZAC Day.

ANZAC Day is an Australia/New Zealand holiday the commemorates the efforts of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) military operation in Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. I'd never heard of this holiday before, but I quickly figured out that it's essentially Australia and New Zealand's version of Memorial Day.

The celebrations were similar to Memorial Day in the States. The day started with a sunrise service commemorating the fallen soldiers. The ceremony was begun with bagpipes, followed by the laying of the wreaths, a reading of "In Flanders Fields", the anthems of both countries, playing of The Last Post on the trumpet and a moment of silence. Those who know me know I'm a total sucker for military heroism, so that combined with my sleep deprivation translated to me crying like a little girl. And I'm not even Australian!

After the ceremony was a true English breakfast: beef sausage, beef bacon, eggs (poached or scrambled), poached tomatoes, and white beans. Well, a true English breakfast probably would have incorporated a little pork, but you gotta work with what you can get. The breakfast was so yummy and made the early wake up totally worth it.

After a post-breakfast nap, it was time for the cookout--another obvious similarity to the American Memorial Day celebrations. This was clearly my favorite part of the day.

I told the Mister after we got home that the whole day felt like we had traveled to another country. This compound does not allow any Saudis through the gates, so we were completely surrounded by British, Scottish, Irish, Australian, New Zealand and American accents all day. We met some really great people, listened to great live music (with some serious Australian accents!) and ate yummy shawarma...hey, the whole day can't be totally Western, now can it!? It was very bizarre to just get in a car and drive back home as opposed to boarding a plane. The whole experience felt that non-Saudi.

I've never envied those who live on compounds until the weekend. This is a really great compound; it was only built a few years ago so everything's fresh and new. The people that live inside the walls were wonderfully welcoming and friendly. We instantly felt welcomed and at home. They indulged the silly Yanks that had never taken part in this tradition and explained the significance of everything in thick Aussie accents.

Compared to the Aramco camp, this is a much more inviting compound. Most of the Aramcons we've met have been perfectly friendly, but the compound is so big, no one knows if you're a newbie or not. This compound is significantly smaller and purely residential, so it's like visiting a small town. Everybody knows everybody and if you're a new face, the locals introduce themselves. It was so great. This is definitely a compound I would not mind living on.

The dancing and eating and fun times continued into the night and I'm happy to say I think the Mister and I have made some great new friends. There's a desert trek in a few weeks that we were invited to and I cannot WAIT to finally get some Saudi sand between my toes!!

Vicariously yours,

We needed a little Christmas

You may think this update is late, but it's just been traveling on Saudi time. So in fact it's a little early.

Suckas.

This year, I was fully prepared for a Christmas filled with tears and homesickness, but for me that was not the case at all! (Moms, the Mister was longing for a tender Tennessee Christmas, so he missed ya'll enough for the both of us.)

I made an effort to incorporate some of our traditions from home so this holiday wouldn't feel so foreign, so--after a very late night run to the grocery store-- on Christmas Eve, I prepared the breakfast casserole. Technically, it was so late it was Christmas morning, but let's not split hairs.

No pork in the Kingdom = no pork sausage, so this is the lamb sausage I used for the breakfast casserole. I tried not to think of this image as I was eating the casserole on Christmas morning. It looked every bit like a skillet full of cat poop as this picture suggests.

I played the role of matriarch this year and got up before everyone else (all one of 'em) and put the breakfast in the oven. The breakfast casserole is a tradition my family started when we stopped going to my grandparents' house for Christmas morning. Other than the sausage, which was hard enough to locate, it's got some pretty easy-to-find ingredients. Eggs, bread, cheese and milk will pretty much be found in any grocery store anywhere in the world.

The hubbins had monkey bread every Christmas morning with his family, so I got to learn how to make monkey bread for the first time this year! In America, this wouldn't be such a difficult task...But we're not in America, now are we? I searched for the canned biscuits that are the actual bread of the monkey bread, but I couldn't find any. Thankfully, the Mister knows about the secret "American refrigerated stuff" aisle, and Christmas was saved! Other typically American items, not so easy to find.

Exhibit A:

This is not brown sugar. It's just sugar that is brown. Like the unrefined cane sugar. Shopping in the Kingdom is fun!

Exhibit B:

Couldn't find the cinnamon powder, so I had to make my own! This is remarkably easier than I ever thought it would be, but I certainly missed the convenience of just opening the cinnamon shaker. Especially while half awake in my pajamas on Christmas morning.

Exhibit C:

The monkey bread has to be cooked in a bundt pan or an angel food cake pan...both are foreign concepts here, apparently. So I had to get creative a make one of my own! We stuck a glass in the middle of our ikea saucepan and hoped for the best! (We wrapped it in aluminum foil in case the heat made it break. Can't have monkey bread with glass shrapnel, now can we?)

It all worked out in the end, and the hubs and I had a little familiarity on Christmas morning.

We invited the housemates over for Christmas breakfast and some games. We read the Christmas story, nommed on some faux sausage, and worked off the calories with a few rounds of Kinect.

It was a really great first Christmas abroad. We were surrounded by great people, and we got to Skype with our family several times. I look forward to making more Christmas traditions that are uniquely ours, as only living abroad can force you to do.

Vicariously yours,

P.S. We bought ourselves a little treat as a Christmas present:

Dr. Pepper is super expensive here, so we don't get to drink it very often!

Christmas in the Kingdom

Can you find 5 clues that indicate that this photo was not taken in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?

The hubs and I have decided to take Saturday off from work so we can celebrate Christmas together. It'll be an interesting day as it will be the first Christmas either of us has ever been away from our families. This is also the first Christmas for me in an Islamic country, so it's been an odd holiday season.

Before we arrived in Saudi Arabia, I had visions of a religiously oppressive people who had no idea what the Christian holidays were or how they were celebrated. I was surprised to find that my students and co-workers know a lot more than I gave them credit for. Granted, my girls don't really understand that Santa Claus is not in the Bible and that Jesus wasn't acutally born on December 25th, but they know more about the significance of this holiday than I thought they would.

A couple weeks ago, one of my eighth-grade girls asked me if I was going to be absent on Christmas. "I dunno," I answered, "Probably not. I have to work."

The whole class collectively gasped! "What?! You're not going to be home for Christmas? You're going to work on Christmas?!"

I was baffled that my girls were having much the same reaction that my conservative Christian family members and friends back home had when I told them the same news. I'm pretty sure my kids' understanding of the traditions of Christmas are limited to what they see on the Disney Channel, but it struck me as funny that they were so horrified that I was actually considering working on Christmas Day! ...I'm also pretty sure they have no concept of exactly how long it would take for us to fly home for Christmas and still be back to work on Sunday....

But I digress.

Naturally, a few things are going to be different this year as compared to every other Christmas we've ever had. Here are a few of them:

The weather: This one should go without saying. I'm sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt, getting a sun tan as the afternoon sun beats down through my window. Meanwhile, back at home it feels like 19 degrees Fahrenheit and there's a chance of rain/snow showers tomorrow afternoon. Anyone who has had the miserable pleasure of knowing me in a winter season knows how much I hate to be cold. I am most definitely NOT complaining about this particular change in my Christmas routine.

Decorated houses: When I was a kid, we used to go to my grandparents' house for the days just before and just after Christmas. It was the only time we got to see our grandparents, and now I certainly wish I'd appreciated those visits more. As a kids, however, my siblings and I got bored. Fast. So as a distraction, my parents would pack us all up and we'd drive around and look at the decorated houses! This was a novelty for us because we didn't really decorate our house--I grew up in the woods, literally. You didn't see our house until you were right in front of it. So why decorate it if no one but us is going to see it? After a few years, it became old hat to see houses decorated with lights and later the hideous inflatable things that infest front yards today.

There is none of that over here in Saudi Arabia (obviously I'm not shedding any tears for the lack of a giant inflatable Snoopy in our neighbor's yard). When I was on the Aramco camp a few weeks ago, that little kid that peered out of my Grandaddy's backseat came out again as I drove by an American's house dotted with colored lights and said, "Ooooh! Look at the liiiights!" Perhaps it's a good thing that we aren't drowned in the glow of twinkling beacons of holiday-ness. It makes it that much more special when we finally catch a glimpse of the magic.

Time off from school/work: I keep catching friends and co-workers from home updating their facebooks with things like "Out shopping with the kids" or "Movies and hot chocolate with the family in the middle of the day" and I want to comment saying, "DON'T YOU PEOPLE HAVE TO WORK!?" And then I remember. They don't. It's Christmas break at home, and while I'm still a slave to the 5:15 wake up call, they're sleeping in, going to parties, and generally enjoying time with family.

Working has certainly served as a great distraction from the fact that I won't be with my family on Christmas, and it's definitely bizarre to think that right now I'm on my "Christmas break." At home you call it a "Three Day Weekend."

The gifts under the tree: There are Christmas trees available in the Kingdom--shh, don't tell anybody. It's funny because we heard about this Christmas Black Market from a friend who told us in hushed tones the name of the guy at a store who would lead you to the "back room" where all the Christmas paraphernalia was hidden. We kind of laughed and decided against the cloak and dagger method of spreading holiday cheer. We especially laughed when we found out the dinky little 3 foot Christmas trees were going for $50-80 a pop!

Thanks, but no thanks.

We joked about getting a palm tree and having ourselves a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but the fact of the matter is that it's not the tree that makes the holiday for us. So we have no tree this year. And we have no presents to put under it.

Oh, we've bought each other presents. They're just not here. We decided to get ourselves Kinect games for the Xbox, but the ones we want aren't available in the Kingdom yet, and they're too expensive in Bahrain. So we turned to Amazon...which won't ship video games to Saudi Arabia. We've had to get a little crafty with our gift purchasing, but let's just say that Santa's going to be celebrating the Epiphany this year and won't be making his delivery at this house until January.

As for gifts for our family and friends, we did a lot of online shopping and a lot of donating to charities in people's honor. Yes, there are authentically Saudi gifts we want to give, but it'll have to be Christmas in July because we don't trust the Saudi Post to get our gifts to their intended destinations (no offense, Saudi Post).

I'll be sure to report back after the Big Day with a full update on how we spent our time. Until then, ya'll enjoy your carols and hot chocolate and warm holiday goodness.

Vicariously yours,

Baby It's Cold Outsi---wait... (alternate title: It's Beginning to Look a lot like Muharram)

Not a current photo of Saudi Arabia.

I apologize for our week-long vow of silence. It was completely unintentional. You'd think after having almost 3 weeks off from work the Hubbins and I would be well rested and totally ready for our first week back to work. H'oh boy was that not the case! One night I went to bed at 6:45 p.m....and STAYED asleep! Ridiculous.

But hopefully we've found our stride and are back to our normal selves. At least I certainly hope that's the case because we are in it for the loooong haul! NINE more weeks before we get another break--no long weekends, no half days, no inservice days. All school all the time.

Yes, I said 9 weeks. Yes, I realize Christmas falls somewhere in there. No we don't get time off for Christmas.

The fact that I'm having to mentally gear up for weeks of school when I'm typically gearing down, combined with the fact that there is absolutely NO Christmas spirit in this country, leads to me sometimes forgetting that we're in the Advent season.

I'm not surrounded by Christmas carols in the stores and on the radio. There are no stockings, no Black Fridays, no stores hawking their cheap ornaments or buy-one-get-a-worthless-singing-snowman deals. Instead, I'm surrounded by the sounds of the call to prayer, lesson plans, English cluster meetings, and more lesson plans.

I don't mind it so much right now. Christmas isn't about the presents, the concerts, or the movies. I think that feeling will change when more and more people start posting Christmas party pictures on Facebook and my favorite movies like Elf and White Christmas never make an appearance on TV. But what this lack of Christmas has shown me more than anything else is that I don't really celebrate the Advent the way I'm supposed to, and I'm not entirely sure how to start!

I know that every Sunday during the Advent, we light a candle and the preacher says a little something about what the season means. When I was a kid, we always hung the Advent calendar in the living room (not far from the stockings) and put an ornament up everyday until Christmas Day. There are always wonderful parties at ornamented houses with hot apple cider and lots of carol singing. And I've always loved every minute of it. I will cherish those opportunities more after the Mister and I live outside of the Kingdom.

But what REALLY is the Advent, and how can a girl in the middle of the Islamic desert celebrate it without all the other Christians around to help?!

I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm really excited to find out and to genuinely celebrate Christmas in the most basic way. I won't have all the distractions. I'll just have my Bible, my husband, and God.

Vicariously yours,

Happy Thanksgiving from Saudi Arabia!

Welp, Thanksgiving has come and gone in Saudi Arabia, and I must say it was one for the books. I haven't had the pleasure of hosting a Thanksgiving in my own home until now, and I really wanted things to go well. The hubsy and I invited all of the housemates, an American family from down the street, and our new boss and her husband. (Her husband is a Sheikh [read: Billionaire], and is also the man who is sponsoring us in the country, so...there was that.)

We used Alton Brown's Good Eats roasted turkey recipe for our Tom this year, and oh my LORD was it sooo good! We've found a new favorite recipe. We brined the turkey overnight and slathered it in oil before we put it in the oven.

After 30 minutes, we turned the oven down to prime roasting temperature and it was already looking like something from a movie dinner table.

We searched high and low for a roasting pan and one could not be found.

It was even more yummy looking after all the roasting was finished and boy oh boy was it soo juicy and wonderful! As another Food Network host would say, "Yum-o!"

This just doesn't do justice to how beautiful our bird was!

It was funny because before we put the bird in to brine, the Mister and I looked for the neck and the giblets so we could take them out and put them in the fridge. All we could find was the neck. I thought that was a little weird, but we did buy the turkey in Saudi Arabia, so perhaps they didn't know to include the giblets? Anyway, we went about our business. Wouldn't you know, as soon as we started carving, the giblets dropped out, perfectly roasted in their little bag. Oops!

Don't worry, I didn't use them for gravy.

The table was set. We had sweet potatoes with bananas and honey, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, my Granny's sunshine casserole, mashed potatoes, dressing, pumpkin kibbeh, cooked carrots, and yummy yummy rolls.

Oh, and we had two turkeys. The hubs and I made one, and our neighbor and his Thai wife made one. It was so funny, when we all sat down, our neighbor invited the Sheikh to carve the turkey. Being a Saudi, he of course had no idea how to begin carving a turkey, so our neighbor took over. After a couple of ungraceful cuts, his Thai wife said, "Move over, I'll do it," and took the reins!

She did a mighty fine job of carving, too!

The hubsy played nicely with his friends while the grown-ups ate.

And after dinner, we retired to the apartment next door and had dessert and tea. The Mister kept playing outside with the kids and captured these hilarious moments (they're dark and grainy but still pretty funny):

All in all, I think everyone had a great time and lots of food was eaten. That's the whole point of Thanksgiving, right? Hope the holiday was just as fun for everyone else in the good ol' USA!

Vicariously yours,