Holidays Together! Part I

Drew is either 1) moving up in seniority and able to hold off the days of his choosing, or 2) sacrificing a lot of good paying work to spend a special day with me.  In reality, this fall and winter he's had a little of both, but the effect has been that we had pretty much all the important holidays off together from Halloween to New Years.  I don't know that that has ever been the case in our 10 years together and I know for certain not since 2007 when he upgraded to captain.  So here is a recap of our holidays.

Halloween

The tradition of fire pit and tiki torches in costume on the front lawn continued.

You may deduce that we had pretty nice weather on Halloween by my flip flops!

Thanksgiving

After October comes November and we were thrilled that Drew had Thanksgiving Day off.  We were invited to at least four friends' houses for the whole traditional meal, but since the last Thanksgiving we spent together at home was in 2010 when Drew had an overnight in Salt Lake so he brought the whole Southwest crew he was flying with that day to our house and we put on the whole turkey meal, we decided to forgo the big meal and ride mountain bikes instead!

The trails were mostly dry and temps were mild so we journeyed to Antelope Island State Park.

I love this place for its stark lonely beauty.

 And the bison who roam freely*

 
Not for its flat-tire producing thorns!

 *They are not tame. We were cautiously this close but the male was not very happy about it.

We had been so excited to be mtbing on Thanksgiving that we really didn't plan for any Thanksgiving dinner.  By late afternoon on our way home, even the fast food joints were closed, so that meant we needed to scrounge up some food at home. But the cupboards were quite bare, so we ended up toasting some months-old homemade black bean burgers I had in the freezer and toasting with beverages other than wine. 

 Now that's a Thanksgiving spread if I've ever seen one.

But all was well since our light dinner allowed us to save room for my pies I had made earlier.

I made pecan and apple to take to our friends Jim and Shelly's house for dessert.  The family crowd at their house devoured them.

One of the better Thanksgivings I can remember!

Pre-Christmas Family Visit

In early December, Drew was able to wiggle his schedule to get most of the time off needed to accompany me to North Dakota to visit my family for a short pre-Christmas visit.

Mom took us and my sister Di who was visiting from Florida out for a fancy dinner at 10 North Main in Minot.  "Fancy" and "dinner" didn't used to go together in Minot before the latest oil boom, but this place had a nice, hip atmosphere and the food was good.

 Minot, while cold, was festive to visit.

Then to the farm.  There were several days of laying around, short walks to view the wide open spaces,

observe ranch life,

and eat family dinners

including a spaghetti feast at my sister's where we got to see the little twins and play games.

 

But it was soon time to say goodbye to my mom and the rest of the family. 

See, she looks sad to see me go. I am just smiling because I will soon have non-Folgers coffee again. ;-)

This brought us up to the next real holiday after Thanksgiving:

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Yes, Drew's birthday!  Unfortunately, he had to go to work on his birthday, so we only got to spend from 5:00 to 6:00 AM awake together.  That pretty much sucked, but with his birthday so close to Christmas, we can't expect to be able to celebrate them together. So instead we celebrated a day early with morning espressos made with our new home-professional espresso maker

presents, a day lounging together, and a holiday party at some friends house.

That does it for the Holidays Together! Part I post.  Next will be Christmas and New Years.