When you've traveled many hours for every Thanksgiving and Christmas for most of 40 years, like I have, it's an amazing treat not to have to go anywhere for a major holiday. To have family come to our house this year for Thanksgiving was wonderful, and we enjoyed hosting in our new space with lots of room for expanded dining tables and dog and kid craziness alike. Mom came down from Vermont and Micah and Becky and the kids up from Gloucester- though there were only 9 of us, the house definitely felt festive with all the little monsters running around. And, we were truly thankful to escape the multi-day power outages that most of New Hampshire experienced from a dump of 12+ inches of heavy wet snow the night before Thanksgiving.
On Thanksgiving morning we were up early to pop the turkey in the smoker, and to shovel ourselves out in time to reach the local Turkey Trot in Sunapee Harbor. The day was actually quite pleasant, despite the foot of snow, but the usual crowds at the race were definitely diminished by those dealing with unplowed driveways and power outages. Haley ran her first race ever, the 1K "Chicken Run"... we weren't sure how it would go, but Grandma Sally had a tough time keeping up with her and she finished strong, with a huge smile on her face. Success! It's all about having fun at these events. Aiden ran both the Chicken Run and the 5K Turkey Trot, which I think he later regretted as he was really running out of steam around the 6th kilometer. But he also finished strong and we were quickly bundled up and headed back home to await the Gloucester Deans.
Thanksgiving dinner was delicious, with smoked turkey and duck, mashed potatoes, mushroom stuffing and gravy, home grown squash, and several delicious pies. We were all stuffed and ready for bed by 6pm. Well, the adults were... but the kids were just getting going and it was an exercise in futility to get them corralled for bed before they were ready. Successful "sleepovers" were eventually had by Haley and Phoebe (in the guest room with Grandma) and Aiden and Fisher (in Aiden's room). Finna wasn't too keen on sleeping over anyone's house but her own, much to Micah & Becky's dismay. Nevertheless, the next morning everyone was up bright and early, stuffing themselves into jackets and mittens and off to enjoy opening day at Mt. Sunapee. We arrived 45 minutes too early (not on purpose) and enjoyed hot chocolate in the lodge until the lifts started up. The magic carpet was having some technical glitches first thing in the morning, so we were forced to take all the littles up the chairlift and down a trail that most likely scared the snowpants off of them. Maybe not the best idea, whoops. They recovered, thankfully, and by the end of our day Phoebe and Fisher were really getting into cruising down the little bunny hill and up the magic carpet. Fisher, especially, is a daredevil who wants NO help at all going down the hill as fast as he can, no turning required!
The Gloucester Deans departed on Saturday, and we set about transitioning from Thanksgiving to Christmas. We cut our xmas tree, our gigantically huge and unbelievably wide xmas tree (actually Andy felled it on top of me... thanks, hon!) and somehow maneuvered it onto the top of the minivan and secured it with a few flimsy knots. It's kind of a miracle we got it home without it falling off the car, even though it's only a 2 mile drive. Stuffing it through the sliding door on the deck was also a challenge, but from then on it was relatively smooth sailing to get it set up and decorated. Aiden and Haley had a great time unwrapping all of our ornaments with Grandma Sally, reminiscing about the ones they'd made and asking about the ones we've had since before they were born. This is the first year we fit every last ornament we own onto a single tree, and we have ornaments for at least 2 regular sized trees! It's a monster of a fir tree, but it came out beautiful in the end.
Sunday we said goodbye to Grandma Sally until we see her next in Islamorada (February seems so far away now!) and headed back out into the snow for some fresh air. At Low Plain, Aiden tried XC skiing for the first time (rentals) and Haley tried snowshoeing. Aiden loved his experience ("mom, this is soooo much fun!") and Haley... well, Haley was dreaming of tea parties and next weekend's nutcracker ballet, I think. She was short lived on the snowshoes. But we'll try again this winter sometime, since we've got to embrace the cold white stuff here or else shrivel up into pasty seasonally-affected zombies waiting for the light and warmth to return next spring. Here's to a winter full of sledding, skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, ice fishing, snowshoeing and making snow angels. Let it snow :)
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