The holiday has come and gone, and we had a nice one with Jose’s family visiting. It was lovely to not have to travel this year — though I fully recognize the burden that Jose’s brother took on by coming here instead! He and my sister-in-law have 3 boys ages 5 and under, and I know it’s a lot. I remember road trips being stressful when my girls were that age, and we only had two!
Nonetheless, we had a great time with them despite some truly dismal weather. It rained pretty much non-stop on Thanksgiving day itself, but we were able to get outside on Friday between rain showers. (The photo above is on the small pier at Bay Area Park; that’s Armand Bayou in the background.) The weather improved significantly on Saturday, and we hit another park with the cousins. My kids never seem very enthusiastic about parks when it’s just the two of them, but add in friends or cousins and they’ll play for hours!
Jose planned most of our Thanksgiving meal and it was great — a good mix of homemade and storebought items. We cooked together, but didn’t need to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. Because my future self might be interested, we had:
- Cajun-fried turkey (ordered from a local meat market)
- Mashed potatoes (made from this Pioneer Woman recipe)
- Roasted carrots and green beans (no recipe, just roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper)
- Stuffing (added celery, onion, and broth to store-bought seasoned bread crumbs)
- Gravy (from a jar)
- Rolls (ordered from our favorite kolache bakery)
- Chocolate cream pie (made from this NYTimes recipe)
- Pumpkin pie (from HEB)
- Fresh whipped cream
The only thing “missing” was sweet potatoes, which I love…but mashed potatoes plus sweet potatoes felt like A LOT of potatoes. As a compromise, I will be making sweet potato casserole sometime soon. Ha.
Thanks for all the kind comments on my previous post. I won’t say that having a holiday break magically cured my ennui, but it did help. I feel like I look really tired in the photo above (holding my cute 8-month-old nephew!) even though I got more sleep during the last week.
Looking ahead to December and the inevitably long list of holiday activities and things to see and do and buy, I’m trying to consciously lighten my load by planning ahead and/or simply taking items off my plate. Neighborhood party? I chose the “donation” option (which they offered!) and sent the organizers $25 instead of signing up to bake or buy craft supplies. Daily December blogging? I’ve done it for several years in a row but I’m going to let myself off the hook for that this year.
Even on the quilting front, I’m trying to wind down for the year. In the last couple days I’ve thoroughly confused myself trying to figure out how to make some changes to my overall website setup to incorporate a non-Etsy shop plus a place to occasionally offer an on-demand lecture/course. I honestly can’t figure out what will work best for me, and am trying to avoid paying an arm and a leg. Perhaps I should just let things lie as they are for now.
And really, there are only three things that I need to do in the next 2 weeks: release a new pattern (that is completely done), make blocks for the November prompt of my quilting bee, and make an item for the Houston MQG holiday swap. Once those are done, I can say “enough” until 2023.
