Thankfully Thanksgiving

I thoroughly enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday. I haven't taken more than one day off since March, to go to Costa Rica, and I can't remember the last time I stayed home for more than a weekend.

Thursday, I spent most of the day cooking. I started around 10am, took a break around 2pm for a run with Erik, and finished right at 5pm, when we took everything over to Erik's parents' house for our holiday meal.

Friday was my day to relax. I stayed on the couch in pajamas for entire morning, watching "What Not to Wear" and "Man vs Wild" marathons. Erik raked the leaves, since our first leaf collection was the next day, and I worked on putting the garden to its winter bed.

Saturday was our shopping day. After checking out Bob's Red Mill for breakfast with Julie, we went to Lowes, Costco, back to Lowes to make returns, Home Depot, Fabric Depot, and Ikea. It was six hours of exhausting shopping, but we investigated and/or bought many things we'd meant to for quite some time.

Sunday I planted spring bulbs while on the phone with my mom, and we put strings of lights up on the house. Erik did more of the light-stringing, as he's better on the ladder and has much better reach. I climbed the apricot tree and lassoed lights around its branches, and worked more on the garden. I completely cleared and then winter-planted a small raised bed with Swiss chard and broccoli. I hope the latter fares better than my summer broccoli, which succumbed to the most incredible plague of aphids I've ever seen.

It was a rare, relaxing holiday, and over far too soon, despite the feeling on Friday that we still have a full weekend ahead of us.