Thanksgiving 2020

Thanksgiving was a blast this year!  The theme was spatchcock and hairy nipples. Yes you heard that right. Read on....

My boys were disappointed we couldn’t go to Whistler since the border is still closed, but I was happy to stay home and feast. Luckily the Johnson’s came so we had new faces to keep us from getting bored with each other. It made all the difference. 

Marcus and Ethan were house sitting/dog sitting for our friends at their lake house which meant everyone had a bed to sleep in and when it was time for bed, the teenagers left for the lake house staying up until all hours of the morning without adult supervision. They also got paid to get pillows shipped out for my friend’s business so they even made some money while watching TV. 

Wednesday night I got the crazy idea to have Chicago pizza flown in for dinner so I wouldn’t have to cook. It arrived frozen solid, packed with dry ice. The pizza was good but after eating Toby’s delicious dip as an appetizer, none of us were very hungry. We had pizza leftovers for days. 

While I was baking up pies and April was washing dishes, the karaoke machine came out and the fun reached new heights. Randy and Marcus were quite the duo and Megan is quite the singer, even with hiccups!

Thanksgiving day started with a turkey trot by the lake. It was a flat 5k and all the boys acted like we were making them run a marathon and complained about being sore the next couple days. The big babies! We ended the race down at our friends' dock so we could mentally prepare ourselves for the polar bear plunge the following day.

I stayed home to cook and enjoy solitude while everyone went to a park to play football. I texted some friends and told them if they just happened to be at the park at the same time we could bump into each other and have a spontaneous game of football. Luckily one of them took the hint and everyone had a great time, even though we were breaking COVID rules. 

this is what a spatchcock turkey looks like
I smoked my first turkey using the spatchcock method (a word I’ve never heard before) but it sure is fun to say over and over again and so we did. And it was delicious and simple. I also made three pies with homemade, flaky pie crusts, homemade rolls, salad/dressing, and creamed corn with bacon. The meal was delicious!  Toby made a giant bowl of mashed potatoes and the feast was perfect. 

This is what a ton of mashed potatoes looks like

The adult table complete with my china dishes gifted to me by Mom

The kids table.  Pretty sure they finished eating in under 3 minutes before getting back to video games

Feasting!

Chocolate cream pie, banana cream pie, and triple berry pie (with a polka dot crust)

Polar bear plunge!

 We did a polar bear plunge in Lake Sammamish on Friday morning and I’m pretty sure it took a few years off my life. Randy almost ran me over in his rush to get out of the water so that was hilarious and the teenagers weren’t even affected so I guess cold water really does affect the elderly. While we were all standing on the dock getting ready to jump in, some boy made a comment about their hairy nipples and Randy started singing “hairy nipples” in a his opera voice which echoed nicely off the water for all of Sammamish to hear.  We were so inappropriate.  And thus was born our spatchcock hairy nipple Thanksgiving.

We went biking at Duthie Hill mountain bike park and were only delayed a little by the locked gate. The park was open but the back entrance from our church parking lot was “closed due to COVID.”  What a joke right?  We quickly threw the bikes over the fence and were soon biking with the hundreds of other bikers who were enjoying the sunny weather as well. 

We took family pictures for the Christmas card.  Unfortunately this was the best shot of them all.

Did I mention we ate a lot of food?  Randy bought 4 dozen donuts that day!  Two trips to Krispy Kreme for 2 dozen donuts each trip.  We ate them all!

Traeger nachos for the win!  I believe this was when I said, "I can actually see myself getting fatter!"

The little boys also spent hours playing Anky Overdrive, their video game race track thing.  I love when they play with their toys instead of video game.  This is the best of both worlds because they use an iPad/iPhone to control the cars and shoot at each other.  Its great fun!

On the Johnson’s last night, April and I went down to the lake house to watch Lights Out. It’s the scariest movie I’ve ever seen and I can’t believe the teenagers watched it by themselves!  And then decided to watch it again with us!  So now I can’t stand on a shower drain (thanks to Stephen King’s It) and I can’t walk into a room with the lights off. Yay for me. 

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!