Day of T-Gives

So yeah, I just thought I would blog about yesterday, since, you know, it's a major holiday and we had a lot of fun activities and such.

We started out with Amber's 2nd Annual Cedar Hollow Turkey Trot, which I missed out on last year, so I was way excited to be able to participate this time. Amber seems to opt for the slightly longer 4-mile race (unless you would rather do half at 2 miles), rather than a traditional 5K, so that was a nice change. It was raining in the morning, but turned into a light drizzle eventually, which was perfect to keep cool during the race. Apparently, according to the results, I placed 13th, and heck, based on the demographics of the turnout, I bet I'm even in the top three of my age group! Woot! And yes, in this picture, I'm totally rocking fingerless gloves. I'm just that hardcore a runner nowadays.

Mom and her three boys! (She doesn't like to exclude the in-laws in classification as "sons".)
It was Matt's first race (I think), and he did great!

After that, it was still really early so we came home to get things ready for later, but I crashed for a while on the couch while watching Archuleta schmaltz his way through "Crush" and Kristin Chenoweth dazzle me with "The Christmas Waltz" in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Eventually everyone appeared and we had an awesome meal and great times. I was reminded of last Thanksgiving in Appleton, where I was blessed with a great meal, but uncomfortable surroundings. I was really excited to be surrounded not only by amazing food, but the best company I could ask for. The rest of the day consisted of a ping-pong tournament (I don't want to talk about it, okay??...), which predictably ended with a showdown between Matt and Jordan, a boys vs. girls jigsaw puzzle competition, which the boyz won fair and square (all right, it was only by about 20 seconds, but still!). Last year the girls won, and there are many theories as to why the boys dominated this year... Yeah. Anyway, people trickled out slowly and we ended up having a rousing game of Wackee Six and quoting Fred all night. Good heavens, that game hurts my head sometimes.

It was really nice and relaxing. It's so lovely to be able to just sit and, well, do nothing for a while. No GRE to worry about, no major academic events in the immediate future. I was finally able to put on my Thanksgiving playlist (if you're creative, you can actually find several songs that could be about the idea of generally giving thanks, thus Thanksgiving).

And now, at LAST, I can finally listen to Christmas music unabashedly and unashamedly, without reasonable fear of reproach or chastisement. If now's not the time, when is??

Also, thus begins the countdown... For maybe the first time in my life, I'm just as excited, if not more so, for the the day after Christmas as for the day itself.