Three Kids and a Dog: Thanksgiving 2024

Thanksgiving started early this year with the generous offer of four skybox tickets to the Blackhawks game on Wednesday night from one of Tom's vendors. So the kids all went with Tom and I stayed home and got things done.

We hosted 10 family members for Thanksgiving which is pretty easy given the fact that we are used to hosting entire weekends at our beach house and have that down to a science. Hosting holiday dinners is easy in comparison. So easy in fact that we volunteered to host Xmas this year too! (All for the Szurgot side - my mom still refuses to relinquish a holiday but I'm going to tell all my kids that they are more than welcome to do all the work when they are ready!).

Tom made a great turkey (made even easier by the ready to cook prep that our club did) and insisted on making his own stuffing and some special carrots (of varying colors which the kids did not like). His pumpkin pie was very good too even though he kept going to the store and buying evaporated milk when I kept telling him it was sweetened condensed milk he needed. But he pulled it out and whipped up a great pie.

The day after Thanksgiving we headed to Michigan later in preparation for our annual cutting down of our Xmas tree on Saturday. After some debate last year, we decided to choose a new place this year. I was pretty adamant that we switch after two years of really poor options for our tree. I mean it was very difficult to even find a tree that looked healthy and was tall enough without getting a type that you really didn't even want. I found a place a bit closer to our house (Tall Timbers Tree Farm) in Michigan (but further from our friends in IL) but everyone was in agreement that we needed to switch and we weren't disappointed. The place was less crowded, had a great gift shop and free hot chocolate! Plus, their trees were outstanding and there were too many good ones to pick from - win! We enjoyed our time with friends and then all went to The Strand (owners of Firewater Barbecue and our friends) in Dowagiac, MI, for a late lunch and some drinks.

On Sunday, we participated in our club's annual gingerbread decorating lunch. The food is great and usually Tom and I team up with one of the kids to create a house. This year, Hailey and I were partners and after some online research decided to do an IU Gingerbread House in honor of IU's historic football season. Tom and Peyton's house didn't have a theme but looked pretty until Peyton just started randomly adding things to Tom's creation! (Austen never participates in this tradition and is more than happy to stay home and sleep in.)

It was a very full but fun weekend and we were reminded of all things that we have to be grateful for this holiday season - starting with family and then good friends, our health and good fortune. Lucky. And grateful.