Do Nothing Day

Our Thanksgiving weekend started out in the best way possible--with a snowstorm Wednesday afternoon and night. I got let out of work early, and the kids (who had the day off of school) and I indulged in a movie marathon--Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Parts I and II, with a brief intermission to cook and eat dinner.

Thanksgiving morning, we had fruit parfaits ( a tradition started by Z two years ago and, as incongruous as it seems, is the perfect breakfast for the day).

We had dinner at C's father's house, which is a no-frills affair. As much as I'm not a huge fan of the holiday, I prefer a little more pomp and ceremony. At least it's not a men-watching-football-while-women-wash-dishes affair, like all the Thanksgivings I grew up with.

I spent the morning making pies--because last year there were only very unseasonal pies (chocolate and lemon and that sort of thing). Neither C nor I like pumpkin pie, but the boys were adamant about having one, so I made my first ever, as well as an apple-blackberry. I would rather have cranberry-pecan or maple-walnut custard or mincemeat (the kind with green tomatoes and raisins and vinegar and allspice, not the kind with venison), but nobody else would eat that. I also made cranberry sauce, because the kind from a can gives me horrors, and this salad (which was divine), so there'd be something vegetarian to eat. And, oh, my, don't I sound picky?

Many years ago, I heard of the concept of "Buy Nothing Day" as an alternative to Black Friday, and while I never was a big Black Friday shopper, the idea appealed to me and I've tried to stick to it ever since. Sometimes when traveling, we've bought food or gas, and I'm sure the year we went to Quebec City for Thanksgiving weekend, I bought something on Friday (but that didn't count, because it wasn't Black Friday in Canada), but otherwise I'm happy to avoid the malls and the crowds and the efforts to manipulate me into buying things I don't need or want. 

This year, I declared Friday "Do Nothing Day" and spent the day playing in the snow, reading, writing, fiddling with projects, and generally lounging about. We kept to the Do Nothing on Saturday, though we did do the housework and went for a hike, and I attempted to get a Christmas card picture of the boys--I took more than 130 shots, and not one of them all three smiling with their eyes open and no goofy looks on their faces. Really it shouldn't be so hard. I'm finally learning to do some post-processing on my computer in an attempt to salvage a few half-decent ones.

We rounded out our weekend with a trip to the Big City (Portland) Sunday, to see "A Christmas Carol." As we walked around downtown, looking in shops, picking up a few gifts, killing time until dinner, E and Z, my little homebodies, moaned, "When can we go home?" "Can we go home now?" If they had their way, every day would be Do Nothing Day.