Not Your Typical Thanksgiving...

Ben and I have spent every Thanksgiving in our almost 7 years of marriage with my family (my parents, Davey, and Gram). This means I have never had to even think about making a Thanksgiving dinner on my own. Well, this year was a little different.

My Gram went to Italy a few weeks ago to meet up with some friends. Keep in mind that she is 82 years old, but very spry and energetic. However, while they were in a train station in Milan, she tripped on a bolt and broke the neck/top of her femur. Gram had to have surgery (in Milan, where few staff speak English) to have a pin placed in her hip. Since then, she has been at this hospital recovering and having physical therapy. My parents decided a few days after the accident that they needed to fly to Italy and help her, so they used up every airline mile they could muster up and went to Italy, totally last minute. They will all fly home on Nov. 29th. Gram is doing well, working on walking with crutches. She said her Italian surgeon is "dashingly handsome," which cracks me up!

Well all of this meant my parents would be gone for Thanksgiving. I thought about cooking the Thanksgiving meal for about 2 minutes, before deciding it would be way too much work, especially with Eli. So we ended up going with some friends to a very nice Thanksgiving dinner hosted by Kellogg, the business school at Northwestern. As you may know, I am QUITE picky, but I was really impressed with the quality of food. There wasn't too much or too little -we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, tasty sweet potatoes with marshmallows, a green bean/bell pepper dish, different types of rolls and croissants, etc. We even had the option for some Indian food - basmati rice and a sweet potato curry - apparently this was on the menu because the Dean is Indian (and there were a lot of Indian business students at the dinner). Then there were lots of desserts to choose from, from an eggless chocolate cake to mini pumpkin pies.

This ended up being the easiest Thanksgiving - we showed up at 1:45, ate dinner and socialized until 4, then came home and relaxed. There was no cost, no cleanup, and no fighting the crowds at the airport or traffic on the highways. Thank you Aaron and Jenn for inviting us!

We had Davey with us last weekend and then again for Thanksgiving through this weekend.

We put a napkin around Eli's neck and he looked like a little bandit!

We gave him a lemon wedge to chew on - he loved it!

The dinner was in the Allen Center, with a nice view of the Lake behind us.

Eli chewed on that toy for a while...

Ben played some football in the snow/wind with temps in the 30s on Thanksgiving morning - he had a great time but I heard the game was pretty rough...