Started this post this morning, but never finished due to distractions of cooking the turkey and all the fixin’s. Thought I had plenty of time to sit at the computer for a bit, but it didn’t work out that way and before long Patrick and Veronica were here. We had a great Thanksgiving with the traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole and fruit salad ambrosia. We finished off with a wonderful pumpkin cheesecake that Veronica ordered from New York, which was absolutely the best. Thought I’d miss the usual pumpkin pie, but this was fabulous! The turkey was one of the most moist we’ve ever had, and it literally fell off the bones. Great meal and great company–what more could you want?

All the animals enjoyed the day as well. Floyd, Murphy and Loki got a few bites of turkey during cleanup and then they all feasted as I cleaned the meat from the bones and gave them the leftovers. This used to be Darwin’s favorite day of the year when he totally pigged out on all the scraps. None of these guys do him justice. I think Floyd might have been able to polish off everything, but he’s not used to that much people food and we didn’t want him to have ‘intestinal’ problems.

Thought about going to a few of the ‘Black Friday’ sales tomorrow, but have pretty much decided against it. I may head out to Michael’s to pick up a few silk flowers and other stuff to replace all the fall arrangements in the backyard. I don’t really need anything else in the way of decorations. I got a huge bag of decorative Christmas ribbon from a woman that I work with so will try to make up some bows to go with the backyard floral baskets. I do have more rooms to decorate this year since I now have my office and the guest bedroom after cleaning out both rooms last summer so perhaps the ribbon/bows can be used in these rooms. I have about 19-20 crates of Christmas decorations, but I always feel you can never have enough Christmas stuff…so I may get tempted into getting more than orginally planned at Michael’s!

Beyond that, I can’t even imagine going to Target, Best Buy or the dreaded Mall. I’d rather pay a few dollars more than have to do battle with those crowds. There are a wealth of great deals out there, but I can’t handle the craziness. So I’ll stay home (except for Michael’s) and begin to get the house ready for Christmas.

Patrick lit the pilot lights in my heaters tonight so I finally have heat…and just in time. Just watched the news and it’s supposed to get chilly tonight, so it will be nice to have a warm house for a change. It really felt like Thanksgiving weather this morning. It was cold and foggy and seemed like the kind of weather I remember from Ohio. But then it got nice and sunny and warm this afternoon and we had doors and windows open as we enjoyed our dinner. This is one of the big reasons I’m thankful I live in California.

Hope everyone had a great turkey day!