Where did my weekend go?

My first Thanksgiving away from home went surprisingly well. I know I should silence my inner pessimist and leave out the "surprisingly" in that statement, but I tell it like it is. Before going to Nic's aunt and uncle's house for the big holiday meal, I spent the day erecting and decorating the Christmas tree (ahhh, insert singing angels here), unpacking a little, and doing laundry...lots and lots of laundry. The actual family time didn't happen until later in the day and it was nice. I think part of what made it so enjoyable for me was the fact that it was smaller than I expected and I had met nearly everybody there before at least once or twice before. It was relaxing and the food was delicious. Nic says that's what happens when your aunt is a former home ec teacher.

I didn't overeat on Thanksgiving, despite Nic pleading with me to "not disappoint" him. He doesn't realize that the "not disappointing" should, for any normal person, translate into "embarrassing." So, I most likely disappointed him, but positively did not embarrass him and that's what matters most to me. I don't know them well enough to really embarrass myself in front of them yet. They have years of that to look forward to.

Let me tell you, I spent the rest of the long weekend at Tower making up for it. I gorged myself on petit fours, pumpkin cake, Swiss Colony spread with crackers, meatloaf, egg rolls, turkey salad, truffles, homemade chocolate covered cherries, brownies, and mashed potato candy. Oh, the mashed potato candy! It seems so wrong to call it that because, when you consider the ingredients that go into it and their respective quantities, "pure-rot-your-teeth-sugar-candy" would be much more fitting. However, there is a small amount of mashed potatoes that go into the candy and, damn it, people don't expect that! I makes it seem far more interesting. It is DELICIOUS. It's reminiscent of Mounds bars, except so. much. better. My mom is a genius with food. Nick says so. He even offered to hire her to be our personal chef.

Speaking of Mom being impressive in the kitchen, she lured Nick up to Tower with egg rolls on Saturday afternoon...not that she necessarily wanted Nick to come to Tower, but he was all "tell mom to make me an offer!" and then he basically told her what the offer needed to be. No joke, he ate fifteen of them as soon as he got to the house. Red says I should be embarrassed by him like she was by Darren when he ate five pork chops at dinner. Whatevs, he's a growing boy.

I'm finally starting to get really excited about Christmas. I even can't wait to finish my shopping, despite the crowds of idiots sure to be in all of my favorite stores from now until December 25th. I suggested early last week that we kids all go in together on a tv for dad for Christmas. We hemmed and hawed and Red and I went back and forth about whether or not we want to spend that much money and whether or not he'd actually likw a new tv. You know these new fangled television sets are wide screen and Dad hates that they make the actors and actresses and Suze Orman look fat. I sucked it up and just placed the damn order on Thursday before going up to Tower and, having spent an entire weekend there, I now know for certain that it was the right decision. Dad's tv is CRAP. So crap it's comical. The picture is now suddenly more clear than it's ever been before, but that's only when there aren't huge lines moseying across the screen, distorting the hell out of the picture, making Ben Stiller's nose seem even bigger than it already is. The nice thing is that when you shut the power off, the picture remains, but WITHOUT the distortion. However, you lose the sound. And there's that whole issue with the power not actually being off.

I think it's safe to say that Fahj is ready for a new tv. In fact, he's even talking about buying one soon, but I think we all feel pretty safe in the assumption that he's too cheap to do it after Christmas. If he hears from absolutely anyone that the price is going to drop after the holiday season, he will wait. Until then, he's using the 19" tv that he bought for Red when she graduated from high school. And it sucks. At least he got to catch Polar Express in hi def though.

Today, on our way home to Duluth, we stopped to visit Mike's family. Oh, who am I kidding? We stopped to visit Taylor. I had not seen her in a month and a half and hot damn, has she gotten big. She's totally a kid now. There's no baby left there. It's sad but, at the same time, really fun. She's now fourteen months old and spends most of her time playing mom to two of her dolls. She wraps them up in a kitchen towel, carries them around, pushes them in the swing, sits on her little pink chair with them. It's ADORABLE. Red is coming to Duluth next weekend and Mike and Amanda are bringing Taylor down to hang out with us while they do some shopping and have an uninterrupted dinner at an actual restaurant for the first time in ages. I'm so excited to experience grown-up Taylor with Red present. We are going to have stupid fun. Don't think the fact that she's at the perfect impressionable young age to learn bad words has escaped me. You know I won't be the aunt to teach them to her though.