our first "normal" Thanksgiving since 2019

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. I certainly did because we hadn't had a "normal" Thanksgiving in three years. It also helps that my company had a great Thanksgiving lunch the day before. :-)

Thursday

Our original idea was to invite my aunt Cynthia and cousin Connie to dinner at our house. But life sometimes has different plans. Connie had signed up for a turkey trot and couldn't come, and Cynthia had already accepted an invitation to a potluck at someone else's house. I figured we would be spending Thanksgiving alone.

However, the good news is that Connie later called and said she still wanted to see us. We were more than happy to oblige and invited her over to our house on Friday for lunch. Another highlight is we got to see Cynthia after all. Even though she couldn't stay for dinner, she still came to visit us twice — once in the afternoon and once after the event ended. So that was nice.

Friday

I was thrilled to catch up with Connie as we hadn't seen each other since Cathy's wedding three summers ago. Mom made us lots of good food as she always does. Even though it was just the four of us, everyone had a great time. We also wanted to invite Cynthia over, but she was in Carmel for a day hike. However, she did want to see us again and invited us to go over to her house the next day for dinner. As you could imagine, this was a pleasant surprise.

Saturday

We took a stroll to World Market after breakfast as we hadn't been there in a while. I got some potato crisps from the UK as well as several chocolate bars. Despite the food prices these days, the items weren't too expensive.

I also helped my dad pick the apples and persimmons from our trees. He wanted to harvest the fruit before the birds got to them. One great thing is that two people working together can get things done in half the time.

All of us then headed to Cynthia's place. It was certainly a pleasure to see her and Connie again. Cynthia made us a nice hot pot dinner, complete with cod and lobster. I wasn't hungry at first because dinner started around 5 p.m. or so, but that didn't matter because everything was really good. She also brought out a Basque cheesecake for dessert — which was absolutely delicious. We then had a great time talking about music and the arts. Although my uncle Dong didn't join us for reasons I'd rather not discuss, that didn't make the evening any less enjoyable.

Dad wanted to leave shortly after 7 p.m. as Cynthia also goes to bed early nowadays. As much as I wanted to stay longer, Cynthia looked a little tired. Of course, that's not a problem because we have plans to get together again around Christmas. :-)

Sunday

We didn't do a lot on Sunday as we had already done so much in the past three days. However, my family did go for a stroll in our neighhborhood twice. I also completed some quests on an alt account in RuneScape as well as studied some Python.

On the whole, our Thanksgiving break was much better than expected. I definitely can't wait to see my cousin Cathy and her husband Andrew in December. Less than two weeks to go!

Currently listening to: "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys