Day 23: The View

So, I'm breaking from the photo-a-day mold, but I just have so much to tell you about.  I'm going to give you a bird's eye view of my Thanksgiving Extravaganza.  Two full days of Thanksgiving!  Here we go...

Thursday, November 22nd:

10:00 am:  Wake up.  Slept in.  Win!
10:30am:  Nicole, Hudson and Elam come by, and we head to Krispy Kreme.

10:45am:  Arrive at Krispy Kreme.  Tim, Ty, Matthew, Jason, Jackie, Samantha, and Jessica join us.

Elam was very adamant that he wanted this doughnut.  This one.
This one right here. (It was the plain glazed doughnut.)

They had a promotion:  buy 14 get 10 free.  Yeah, we'll take that.

11: 30am:  Head to a rare green area to play two-hand touch football for a lil' bit. Fierce.

1:00pm:  Head to McDonald's for lunch

2:00pm:  Head home to get cleaned up.  Make sweet tea and mashed potatoes.  We have a small orchestra coordinated in our kitchen, with our little oven and fridge.  Over the next two days, my roommates and I will crank out:  mac-n-cheese, gravy, dressing, green bean casserole, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs, cornbread, turtle cheesecake, dumplings, sweet tea, unsweetened tea, sweet potatoes, homemade apple cider, and yeast rolls. 

5:00pm:  Head to some Lebanese friends' house.

5:45pm:  Arrive at the Lebanese-American Thanksgiving Feast!  It actually felt like the original Thanksgiving:  friendships and food blended across two cultures.  The food went something like this:  Lebanese garnish, American turkey, Lebanese rice, American gravy, Lebanese Hummus, American Mashed Potatoes, Lebanese Fattoush, American Broccoli Casserole, and the list goes on and on... 

Pretty fall decorations!  They loved us so well!  How sweet
of our dear friends to embrace OUR HOLIDAY
and seek to make it feel like we were at home.  

9:30pm:  Head home completely stuffed and happy.  Time to start cooking for round 2 tomorrow.  

12:00 am:  Start skyping with family all over the place.  "Happy Thanksgiving to you too.  Yeah, I had mashed potatoes and gravy today. You're buying what during Black Friday Shopping!?"

2:00am:  Whew... Fall Asleep.  

Friday, November 23rd

10:00 am:  Slept in again.  Win!

11:00 am:  Go for walk/run down by the Mediterranean.  

1200 pm:  Head to Fakhani to buy cheese.

12:30 pm:  Head to produce stand to by cucumbers.

1:00 pm:  Home to cook.  We got a full kitchen going, with all 4 roommates in the process of making 1 to 3 things at any time.  Talk about team work!

2:00 pm:  Enlist some of the guys to come and help us carry our massive amounts of food and decorations up to Nicole and Tim's where we will have our second Thanksgiving Dinner. 

2:30 pm:  Heating up, cutting up, setting up...  all of those preparations that go into a big dinner.

4:00 pm:  About the time many of my friends are Black Friday shopping, feast #2 begins!

Massive THANK YOU to Lindsay for sending me a
Diet Dr. Pepper all the way from America!  I was
 bubbly about it all day.  It was so good!

Let the feast begin!

Some people never outgrow the kids table...

5:30 pm:  After the feast we played an impressively fun game that Jackie created   Thanksgiving Family Tradition Olympics.  Thanks Jackie!

Samantha's Olympics secret talent:  impersonations!

7:00 pm:   Break for dessert.  Sadly, it didn't live long enough to be photographed.  Shout outs for our amazing dessert artisans:  Nicole- Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Jackie- Pumpkin Pie and Pecan Pie.  Jessica- Turtle Cheesecake.  Kim- Homemade Apple Cider. We lay around in stuffed lethargy until the boys are in bed.

9:00 pm:  Watch "Madea Goes to Jail" for no other reason than we've been wanting to.

11:00 pm:  Start cleaning up Nicole's kitchen and putting her house back in order.  Many hands make light work.

12:00 am:  Roommates and I arrive home to start Round 2 of cleaning in our house.  We decide to all do it together before we go to bed so we can wake up to a clean house on the morrow.  It takes awhile.

1:30 am:  Finished!  I head to bed and fall asleep watching "Goodbye Toby" from season 4 of "The Office."  Goodnight pumpkins. Goodnight food.  Goodnight Thanksgiving. Goodnight moon.