Our Thanksgiving Weekend

How was everyone's holiday? We had a very nice long weekend! I hope you did, too.

Our Thanksgiving got off to a little bit of a rocky start, but ended well. We woke up early because Eric was signed up to run a 5-Mile Turkey Trot in Prospect Park (Brooklyn), and I planned to go with him. I wasn't feeling well when I woke up though, so I stayed home to make pie. Yes, Eric went to run five miles and I stayed home and made pie. That is how we each prioritize our lives.

Eric returned a few hours later with a good race time and a fancy Turkey Trot medal. Way to go, Eric! Plus, on his way home from the subway, he got to see a couple Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons pass by. So, I guess that counts as us having seen the parade three years in a row, right?

My Turkey Trotting husband

Turkey Trot medal

Eric hopped in the shower right away and I went to retrieve my freshly-baked pumpkin pie from the oven. This is where things really went awry. As I tried to move my pie to its cooling rack, it somehow slipped out of my hands and fell right to the floor. PIE EVERYWHERE. Eric could hear me cry out in despair from the shower, and I could practically hear Achilles yelling in his little mind, "It's a Thanksgiving MIRACLE!!!" as he dashed out to the kitchen to investigate. Luckily, we have been working on all kinds of training with him, including making him sit and wait until I tell him to go eat when I feed him. That training paid off during the Great Pumpkin Pie Debacle of 2010 because Achilles ran right to my side, stopped dead in his tracks and just stared at the pie, waiting for my cue that he should eat it. That cue would never come, poor well-behaved dog. RIP Pumpkin Pie #1.

To be fair, the pie did kind of land in his food bowl, so should have been fair game.

This dog looks disgruntled.

Luckily we live above a grocery store that is open on Thanksgiving, so Eric ran down and bought the supplies for Pumpkin Pie #2, which was prepared without incident. The day is saved!

The rest of the day was very nice. We had some nice chats with family (including an awesome Skype with Eric's family), munched on shrimp, cheese, pepperoni and crackers, and prepared an amazing feast while we watched the Thanksgiving Parade on DVR.

Our appetizer

Mmm, shrimp

Eric checking the turkey

Oh, hello there, you delicious-looking turkey, you.

The meal itself was divine. We have really come a long way in our Thanksgiving preparation skills (Pie Debacle notwithstanding). We ate delicious food, we drank wine, we talked. We ate far, far too much. Just how Thanksgiving should be!

Our spread, including turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, and pie.

Green bean casserole and gravy

Artsy wine/table shot

Family Thanksgiving photo

After dinner we relaxed for a while then dug into dessert: Pumpkin Pie #2, and a Carvel ice cream cake that Eric picked up along with my pumpkin pie supplies. We spent the rest of the night relaxing and watching TV.

 This pie made it safely to my table, without and floor detours.

Eric's adorable ice cream cake

Friday was a reasonably quiet day. Eric had to go in to work for a bit, so I stuck around the house and made turkey soup. Mmmm, mmmm. We had our second round of Thanksgiving food for dinner, and it continued to be amazing. Another quiet night in finished things off.

Saturday we went out and picked up a Black Friday online purchase from Best Buy - a new, fancy camera! Eric has really taken an interest in photography recently, so we decided to upgrade our point-and-shoot camera for something with a bit more capability. Eric did a ton of research, and we ended up with a Nikon D3100. We have a lot to learn about the new camera, but so far, we love it. In my opinion, it was totally worth it just for the ability to get these sorts of pictures of our view:

Looking southeast towards Times Square and the Empire State Building

Holy zoom! Closeup of the Empire State Building, decked out in her Thanksgiving best

To really illustrate the improvement, here is a photo Eric took of the Thanksgiving-colored Empire State Building with our old point-and-shoot camera, versus the same picture taken with the new camera:

Uh. Yeah.

I know we still have a long way to go to really make the most of this camera, but if we can get pictures like that after just a few hours of Eric tinkering around with it, I'm sold. We can finally take decent nighttime pictures of our view! I've been trying to capture this view on film for the past two years. It's so nice to finally see it in a photo like we see it in real life.

Looking straight ahead (due east) from our living room window

Looking northeast (the two towers on the left are the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, at the SW corner of Central Park)

Looking SE down our street (well, our avenue if you want accuracy)

Anyway, enough gushing about the camera and the view. After Best Buy, we spent the rest of the day inside our warm apartment (it's chilly out there now, folks). I edited photos from Molly's wedding (I'm hoping to get Mexico recaps going this week!), Eric played with the camera, we picked up some Daisy May's BBQ and watched the UF v. FSU game (boo, hiss), then caught up on some DVR.

Achilles was really enjoying all the cuddly couch time this weekend

On Sunday, we went to church then went for a walk through Central Park. There are still a few colorful leaves hanging on some of the trees, but most of the trees are bare by now.

This is Eric trying out the new camera in daylight, and me trying out my new winter coat. So far, I like both.

 Photographer Eric

That beautiful bridge

SE corner of the park

We exited the park at the southeast corner and walked down Fifth Avenue (already decorated for Christmas, of course!) to Bryant Park. We did some shopping at the holiday shops there, then went over to Grand Central to check out those holiday shops. There are some nice things at both places! I just love a good holiday market.

They may be hard to make out, but I love the wreaths they put on the windows of Bergdorf Goodman. They remind me of wreaths I used to put on the windows of my dollhouse at Christmas when I was a kid.

That is one decked out food cart.

We then made our way home, where we had turkey soup for dinner (it turned out very well, if I do say so myself) and decorated our Christmas tree. We usually decorate our tree on Thanksgiving, but this year we just didn't quite get to it. Slackers! But, now it is done and looking lovely.

 Tree trimming time!

Eric trimming the tree

Trying to be artsy again!

We put Achilles in a festive holiday sweater, so he just laid around and looked pitiful.

He did join me for a "finished product" photo, though!

Ta-da!

And that was our weekend! Very nice!

As I mentioned, I'm going to try to get the Mexico recaps started this week (tomorrow maybe?), so check back regularly. I think I'm going to split it up and do a post per Mexico day, just to keep things as short and sweet as possible. Of course we also have some fun stuff going on this week (namely, my husband's birthday on Wednesday!), so there could be all kinds of things to read about around here for the next week or two!