Thanksgiving with My Family

A perfectly dreary Thursday for Thanksgiving. I forced home-made green bean casserole and corn-syrupless pecan pie on my family this year. Brian protested because he loves canned green beans?
I also made and ruined the gravy, but got off the hook because my Dad turned our turkey into a zombie (hilarious, actually).

Because of the turkey fiasco, my family had another Thanksgiving Sunday where my Dad could give deep frying a turkey one more go (it was really good the second time). So that's 4 Thanksgivings in all for me. Awe-some. I need to start running again...

I put more photos from Thanksgiving and other stuff up on my flickr.

Thanksgivings One and Two in Portrait

The First Thanksgiving
The only photo that really came out, unfortunately.
Somehow nine people and one seven-foot German fit around a small table. Because everyone's food was so delicious, I let them go see Harry Potter without me afterward. I didn't even ruin it or complain that I couldn't go because I was too tired.
I think this is growing up?


The Second Thanksgiving
I carried a 21 pound turkey slung over my back and spent the rest of the day basting until she turned golden.
It's honestly amazing how many people can fit into one tiny room and how a lot of good food and wine and music can turn a word like cramped into something more like cozy.



One day Victoria is going to make her fortune in mini pies.
No, seriously.


The father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
And the Turkey.

After looking through all my photos from both nights (a total of 9-sorry, i'm awful at taking pictures without a lot of light and after I've had more than one glass of wine. But the people there were looking sharp and if I had taken more pictures of them, they would have at least looked like they were having fun) I noticed all were taken in portrait. This really bothered me because I definitely prefer looking at photos in landscape.

And a quick word to all those already celebrating Christmas.
Just stop, please. It's not that I don't love Christmas, but you're despecialing it. And well, I think Thanksgiving is pretty great.
I'm looking at you Georgetown.

Halloween

amazing

Paul the Octopus, Republican Jesus, Madeline, House and Cuddy, still not sure exactly what Michael was, Penny Lane, Joan Jett.

A fun group after we rallied from the rally, really.

Woodberry, VA

Woodberry homecoming, corn hole domination, worn paths through fallen leaves, Charlottesville in the fall, a good bench outside a good book sale, Ghirardelli brownies and then, after all that, John left Virginia.

I was warned I might swoon by merely stepping inside the grounds of Woodberry Forest, an all-boys boarding school. Really I was just amazed that they had chandeliers in the dining hall, a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains and little silver tags on all of their (amazing) trees.

This is my effort to take more pictures during the weekends.

Might I add the first and last photos were taken by Drew on my camera.

the apple festival.

syria, va

i love fall, obviously. but there's also a lot of anxiety that comes in october. every so often i get panicky that i'm not giving autumn the attention it deserves. i explain this and offer it as an excuse as to why i have a lot of mini pumpkins.

this weekend we went to an apple festival in the blue ridge mountains.
we made apple sage chutney and apple pie as we played cornhole under what may or may not be a maple tree.
i think this weekend calmed some of my seasonal anxiety. now i just need to start watching scary movies. i love scary movies like i love fireballs. they can be tough to get through at points, and sometimes you need to press pause and remind yourself that you're sitting in your parents livingroom in the middle of the day and later you're going to be eating lasagna.
but there are such things as ghosts.

thanks to drew for photoshopping apples. i can't wait until santa brings me my own photoshop because i gave a dollar to the hobo with the bright blue eyes yesterday.