Thanksgiving Feastivities

I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving!  This week/weekend has been jam-packed with Thanksgiving festivities for us.  Matt's parents came by bus on Tuesday and stayed with us until today (Sunday).  Freezing, feasting, and festooning were all done.  Here are some pictures that show my week:

Wednesday: 

After work, we (Matt's parents plus us) went to the Met to see a Christmas exhibit, consisting of an intricate Baroque nativity scene and Christmas tree.

Then we went to see the parade balloon inflation near W. Central Park.  It was freezing, rainy, and very crowded, but it was really neat to see the balloons being brought to life for the next day.  It got us excited to be at the parade the next day.

 

                                                                                      (Dinosaur lights at Nat. History Museum)

Turkey Day:

We got up at 4:45am to get out to the parade route and get good seats, which we did.  It was another really cold day.  We had snow flurries as we stood outside watching the parade.  Matt got a NY Times and we got hot drinks to tide us over while we waited, so it wasn't bad.  It was SO much fun to be at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade!  What an iconic tradition, a bucket-lister that I can now check off.

            Parade clowns                                   Clowns jumping over clowns

    Go WCU!

 

                   Snoopy and Woodstock - my faves!                      It's Santa! I know him!!!

After the parade, we warmed up back at the apartment.  Then, we went to dinner at a new restaurant called The Cardinal.  Aptly named because the owner is from NC and was serving traditional Southern Thanksgiving fare, family style.  Our waitress was from Winston-Salem.  We ate well.  Eating out on Thanksgiving was a new experience, but it was nice not having the rush and frenzy of cooking tons of food at home.  I couldn't quite imagine cooking a full feast in our small apartment that fits about 1.5 people at a time.

After dinner, we did some of our Thanksgiving traditions: watched Home Alone (mine) and decorated turkey cookies (Matt's).  I can pretty much quote the entire movie since I've watched it with my cousins every year since I can remember.  "When I grow up, I'M LIVING ALONE, I'M LIVING ALONE, I'M LIVING ALONE!"

Friday:

We went to the NY Historical Society Museum to see a holiday train exhibit.  It was small, but pretty neat.  Then we walked over to Bryant Park to see the holiday market that is set up.  These holiday markets are one of the neatest things about NYC around the holidays.  There are some really cool, unique items being sold.

Since we didn't have all the foods that I normally have, or leftovers to munch on, I did some of my own baking: Grandmother's rolls and apple pie are shown here.  I also roasted a turkey breast, made potatoes au gratin, sauteed green beans, and had some of Grandmommy's cranberry relish to go with.  It was a delicious dinner on Friday night!

Then we bundled up and went to see the Radio City Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes.  It was a good show!

Saturday:

Gale and Murray wanted to see another show while in town, so we got up and trucked back up to Times Square area (I've been there too many times in the last week) to get rush tickets (so much cheaper!!).  We scored matinee seats for "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder," a fantastic show.  While we were uptown, we went to the Natural History museum to see a tree that had been set up in honor of the new Night At the Museum movie coming out soon.  All the ornaments were made out of origami ~ amazing!!!  Some of them were so intricate and complex.

After the show, we came back home and relaxed.  I wanted to start decorating the apartment for Christmas, so we got down the things we brought with us...only to realize we hadn't brought very much.  We had a tree stand, but no lights or ornaments (what were we thinking in May!???!?).  We had Matt's nativity scene, a miniature Xmas tree, my Santa pillow, and a little Christmas tree candle thing, but that was about it...not exactly eliciting a festive mood from me.  But...

Sunday:

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.  We went to church and enjoyed service.  Afterward, we participated in the Advent Fest that the church hosted.  It was PERFECT because it provided lots of decorations for us - just what we needed!!!  We came home with an Advent wreath, greenery for a wreath and other accents, pomanders to make our house smell good, and...get this, origami ornaments for our tree.  Considering we had just gone to see the origami tree at the Nat. History museum, this seemed very apropos.  After church we got a tree and some lights.  So, now our apartment looks and smells and feels like Christmas, though different than usual ("different than usual" seems to be a common theme).

I got creative and put our origami stars and boxes, plus Christmas cookie cutters that I had, with some pine cones and other decorations pilfered (they told us to take them) from the Advent Fest at church.  I think it turned out nicely; a little vintage/modern looking tree.

The countdowns have begun:

15 days of teaching until winter break.

19 days until going to NC.

Let's do this.

Rejuvenation

I know I haven't posted in a while.  The last two weeks have been rough.  I could go through all the details, but that would be boring and uninspiring, so I'm going to paraphrase and then focus on the turning point in the last two weeks. 

One major blow was not getting a passing score for my National Board certification.  I was pretty devastated and dejected.  It is not the end of the world, I realize now, and I will try again this coming year.  Another crusher was report cards coming out and a parent really taking it out on me.  Several parents had questions because these were new report cards for them and it was confusing to see 2's instead of 4's for their *perfect* children.  But 1 parent got personal with it all and took it out on me in a nasty kind of way.  After receiving bad news from National Boards, this pushed me over the edge a bit.

The turning point was this past weekend when Matt and I went on a retreat with the 20s/30s groups from church.  It was a weekend getaway to Cornwall-On-Hudson, about an hour and a half north of the city.  We stayed at a United Methodist camp in one of the manor houses.  This was not "roughing it" kind of camping.  The manor house had tons of rooms, nicely decorated, and lots of land behind it to sprawl out.  The weekend was all about Finding the Wellspring - determining our gifts at this point in our lives and identifying the things that were holding us back from being our best selves.  This was just the kind of stopping-and-reflecting that I needed.  It was divine intervention, I believe.  I took a lot of time to just be quiet and still.  I shut off my phone for the whole weekend (it was liberating!) and prayed a lot.  I won't go into a lot of details, but suffice it to say that I found the kind of peace I was searching for and a lot of the burdens I'd been carrying were lifted.

Besides the intense spiritual work we did, there was a lot of socializing and fellowship.  We made a lot of new, great friends.  We ate a LOT, played games, went on a beautiful hike, sang and slept.  I told the group that when I signed up for this retreat a few months ago, it was mostly because I wanted to make more friends.  But, as the weeks went on and things were challenging for me, I realized that this retreat held much more significance than just making friends.  I gained some insight to myself and a deeper connection with God.  So, it was a fantastic weekend and I'm really glad we went.

~

Tonight we had friends, Alex and Rachel Lopez, come to visit just for the evening.  We knew them from our church in Raleigh, but hadn't seen them in years, since their wedding.  They live in Houston and we loved catching up with them, sharing some wonderful pizza at a new place, and making plans to see each other sooner rather than later.  We hope they will come back and visit soon!

~

This week brings lots of excitement.  Matt's parents are coming up as I type this now on the bus from Winston-Salem.  I'm impressed that they are enduring the long ride with who knows what kinds of people.  They're coming for Thanksgiving and we have lots of plans...I won't spoil all of them now, so you'll have to check back in on Sunday to find out what all we do!  Have a blessed and joyous Thanksgiving everyone!!!