Thanksgiving 2020

The bar, of course, was set pretty low for Thanksgiving this year in many ways.  But sitting here at the end of the day, I can honestly say it wasn't that bad at all.  In fact, it was pretty good.  We started it out with the Thanksgiving Parade, and again, there were low expectations for that.  The expectations got even lower when we first looked up the Verizon live coverage of the parade, which was astoundingly bad.  Fortunately, we returned to the coverage on television instead, and it wasn't that bad at all.  There were no spectators for this parade, and the parade length was only two blocks long, but still, they managed to make it look like an actual parade somewhat.  My thought was that this year they should have made a reverse parade, where all the parade participants stand in the street in order of the parade, and then the camera is the one that does the moving along instead.

After the parade, Mom always becomes a flurry of activity, cooking up a storm in the kitchen.  The heat goes up in the house, as the oven is cooking turkey, sweet potato casserole, corn, and Zena's grandfather's recipe for dressing, the reason we went out for chicken livers the other day.  Also on the menu were rolls, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and Brussel sprouts, which Madison and I stayed away from, for obvious reasons.  

Since it was just four of us, we didn't get the usual large turkey.  But the turkey we did get had no turkey leg, so we actually got one of those - and a wing - for Madison.  She was gnawing on that all throughout our meal, and it was nice, the four of us there for Thanksgiving dinner.  We said our blessing, and enjoyed our time together there, grateful for another Thanksgiving.

And everyone got along just fine!  This picture was a little joke with Nana - we cut up a lot, although it looks like she's about to cut me up if I don't watch my mouth!

After cleaning up kitchen, Mom and Nana were doing a little yard work outside, while Madison was doing some piano practice.  I was working on the script for Sunday somewhat, although I'm not done yet.  We went over to Nana and Ye-Ye's house afterwards, bringing them some dinner, and of course we sat down to talk for good bit there as well, wishing them all a happy Thanksgiving. 

Tonight was relaxing, and we actually watched a few movies, "Pocahontas" being the first.  I wanted to see that 10th Anniversary version again, which I happen to think is pretty good.  I love that additional scene there, but the overall style and artwork of the movie is something I've always liked.  I was there at the Fox Theater for the premiere of that movie.  I remember the live performances of Native Americans, and the Disney characters and the confetti.  Anyway, Nana and I sat down to watch that one, while Mom got a bath, and Madison was talking with friends on her phone.

We watched "Free Birds" after that, and again it was just Nana and I.  We were on the couch there.  Mom got us some pumpkin pie, and afterwards she was catching up on her emails and so on.  Nana and I got sucked into the story of time traveling turkeys, and of course she was quite amused by it all.

She's in bed now, "talking with George."  She does that quite often, of course.  But today she wasn't crying as much as previous times.  She was laughing more, and that's never a bad thing.  We'll start off with our Christmas season in earnest tomorrow, maybe with a trip to a familiar destination.  We've been researching places to go and things to see, and there are some new ones out there.  We'll see what happens.  We're not shopping on Black Friday, that's for sure.  We never really did that before, in fact.  But we may be out there, visiting a place or two.

One more picture here.  It's our amaryllis for the year!  Mom found it yesterday, and it's a tradition to have one planted at Thanksgiving, and of course by Christmas it blooms.  Consider this the "before" picture!

We'll be reading and praying shortly, but looking back on this day, there's much to be thankful for.  And in fact, looking back upon this year, there's much to be thankful for.  It may seem hard at first to find things to be grateful about, but once you start really thinking about it, it won't take long for the list of things to be thankful for to be so enormous, that all the books in the world couldn't contain it all.