Thanksgiving

A few days ago we celebrated our last Thanksgiving as a law student couple, away from family, here in chilly Boston. The trees in our neighborhood are looking a little cold themselves, as they've shed most of their leaves. I can smell the snow coming. And soon we'll be celebrating our last white Christmas, it's bittersweet but mostly sweet.

Like every other year, Jose and I decided to stay here for Thanksgiving. Sometimes it can get a little lonely during the holiday season, when it seems like everyone is traveling to visit loved ones, but this year we really couldn't complain.

Two days before Thanksgiving, our new sitter was supposed to come over to watch Mirabel so I could cook. As a result of some unfortunate miscommunication, she ended up not coming. So Jose played babysitter that day, and I'm so glad he did because I couldn't have done it without him. We celebrated our first Thanksgiving completely together on Wednesday night. I don't want to say that it's our first official family Thanksgiving, because we were a family before then, but now we feel more complete. While I was sitting on the living room couch waiting for the ham to finish warming up, it occurred to me that even if we're not able to have any more children, I am very content with what we have, or I should say with who we had at our table this year.

...And I guess I shouldn't say table, since we had to celebrate Thanksgiving outside of our real home this year, and we didn't exactly sit at a table for dinner. We live in one of the university's oldest grad student apartments, and just a few weeks ago they checked our place for lead. Apparently, our apartment wasn't de-leaded properly, so they decided to go forward with the process the week of Thanksgiving. Harvard has a few extra furnished units so they put us up in one for the time being. I guess they don't expect students to eat, because they gave us everything except for a kitchen table :P. So we enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner on the living room floor, watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and taking turns stuffing our faces with one hand and holding Mirabel with the other. She is normally pretty giggly, but that night I caught her laughing at a TV character for the first time; she laughed out loud during the scene when Chevy Chase falls through the floor of his attic while wearing an eclectic outfit and tearing up over old family videos. It was cute.

Thanksgiving morning, we watched the parade, and Mirabel got a kick out of the Rockettes. She has so much energy, I think she wanted to join them. For lunch, we had turkey sandwiches with stuffing, and I was able to enjoy a gluten-free turkey/cranberry sauce/mashed potato sandwich for the first time, thanks to Udi's delicious gluten-free bread (they didn't pay me to say that, promise ;).

A friend invited us over for a Thanksgiving potluck, so that's where we celebrated the evening of Thanksgiving. It was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed stuffing our faces even more then. It was nice to celebrate with friends, since our family had their own celebration back in Texas and we couldn't join them. After the potluck, we came home; Mirabel and I watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving movie while Jose sat next to us glued to his laptop, watching UT lose (yet again) to Texas A&M (sadness for us!).

Most years, Thanksgiving comes and goes and I'm left a little sad when it's all over and done with. It's easy to go back into work mode and forget about the things we were thankful for just the day before. 2 days have passed and I'm still feeling thankful this time around.