A Very Thankful Week

Currently, it’s almost a week before Christmas, but this post takes place the week of Thanksgiving since I’m slightly behind on the weeks. I should be caught up by New Year’s since there aren’t many major events that have happened. I’ll be able to combine some of the weeks together.

So, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is where I left off, or around that time frame. Stephen and I had to deal with the terrible Thanksgiving traffic from Nashville to Kingsport. He had to only work half a day, so we started driving around 2:00 PM.

We had Arby’s for lunch for this road trip again, yay!

We got the same thing, except the slider at the bottom was Hawaiian Chicken instead of the regular Roast Beef slider. We waited until we were out of Nashville and all the craziness before stopping. By this time, I was starving. Consequently, I inhaled my food and then I felt a little uneasy, since I’m one of the slowest eaters. That was a bad decision on my part.

I want to say that we didn’t get to Kingsport until around 7:00 PM. We were getting hungry, so we wanted to order from our favorite restaurant before we moved called, Thai Cuisine. We ordered take-out in case they were closing early due to the holidays; plus, we wanted to unload our things and see family already.

Stephen’s not a huge fan of the summer rolls, but I love, love them. They have such a refreshing taste with the apple and celery in them!

He ordered the Chicken Pad Thai this time since it’s been quite some time since he’s had it.

I got my glorious Tofu Glass Noodles! Each restaurant I go to, I try to find a dish like this one, but none seem to ever have the same texture or flavor. Still, one of my favorite noodle dishes. It’s even better cold, and they always give generous portions!

We stayed with Haley and Reece the day before Thanksgiving so we could be at my parents’ house at 10:30 AM. Haley made Death By Chocolate, the meal that I referenced in a previous post that I’ll share with you all tomorrow that we made together, for Reece’s side of the family.

Thanksgiving Day

My brother and sister-in-law were already at my parents’ house. In the midst of a hectic food making process, we couldn’t use the kitchen sink! My parents discovered that there was a hole in the pipe, so their basement was flooded. Instead, we had a tub to catch the sink water and someone would have to dump it out in the yard. Inconvenient, but we made it work!

As we were trying to prep the food, my dad and the guys were trying to help repair the plumbing problem. You can’t see it well in the picture, [it’s right at my older sister’s head] but there were two drawers that my parents had to remove so my dad could access the plumbing line at the back of that cabinet.

Callie, Haley, and I had to peel the shells off of the eggs. They resigned from that duty and refuse to do it next year because their eggs were massacred! I thought it was fun peeling them and somewhat satisfying, haha.

Rene’s Coleslaw that my mom makes every year. I thought it was pretty to take a picture before it was mixed together.

Here’s one side of classic Thanksgiving foods consisting of:

• Seasoned turkey
• Ham
• Canned cranberry sauce
• Rene’s Coleslaw
• Cream cheese corn
• Green beans
• Gravy
• Deviled eggs

To the right of us were:

• Rolls
• Mashed potatoes
• An excessive amount of stuffing [I think it tastes better prior to it being cooked]
• Sweet potato patties
• Plain turkey

Mom decorated the tables. Those glasses were filled with Orange Kool-Aid because mom was needing to use the pitcher to make sweet tea and didn’t want to waste it. She had us all drink some Kool-Aid until our cups were full. I think this time, it was acceptable to do so.

Recently, mom updated how the den looks, so this set up is new. Her goal was to have everyone sit at the table and enjoy meals together.

My aunt supplied these desserts. She made cream cheese danishes, a very chocolatey cake, pecan pie, and some type of key lime pie dipping sauce.

My mom made this Death By Chocolate, and she made my favorite dessert, White Salad.

I’m pretty sure I ate about half of it. It has oranges, pineapples, and cherries in it, so that counts as somewhat being healthy, right?

I put tripod to use again and we took a family photo since we’ve never done that for Thanksgiving. Usually, my mom’s family goes to her parents’ house while we have some of my dad’s side at our place.

Unintentionally, mother, Haley, and I wore the mustard color. We didn’t get a separate picture together, but I was just thrilled to get a family picture!

Stephen’s parents came down to visit around 3:00 PM and stayed for a few hours. We found some old home videos to watch of me back in my gymnastics competitions years.

Haley and Reece went to his family’s Thanksgiving festivities. Nick and Hannah go Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving, so they left and came back later that evening because we all wanted to watch more home videos. We watched a lot of Christmas related ones and a miscellaneous of everything else that was filmed on the same tape, haha.

It was such a fun time to laugh and cringe at our younger selves. Either it was the recorder’s quality or just something, but Nick made fun of the way I sounded at around five years old. He said it sounded like I smoked five packs a day! I will admit, I did sound pretty raspy, haha.

Friday with Stephen’s Family

We went to Chilhowie to stay with Stephen’s family, and we also got to watch some home videos of his.

We met for lunch at Kobe Japanese Steakhouse in Bristol. I love the house soup, especially on a cold day like it was.

I always feel awkward at hibachi style places because the chef interacts with you. I’m just awkward and I never know what to say, so I’m glad that there were some regulars beside of us that carried the conversation.

I ordered the filet mignon and had it cooked medium rare. I tried to save some of the carrots and rice to make it a full plate.

Afterwards, I needed some coffee, so we stopped at Starbucks. I ordered the Iced Chestnut Praline Latte, yum! I usually order a Green Tea Frappuccino, an Iced Caramel Cloud Macchiato, or one minus the Cloud, haha. I wanted to try a season drink since I haven’t had one up until this point.

Stephen’s dad makes homemade pizza. He made a ton for our wedding shower that everyone loved!

It was a nice time with them. I played with Heleena [not pictured] and we built with some blocks and looked through animal books. She’s about a year and seven months old and such a good baby to spend time with.

Saturday

Around 2:00 PM, we met my family to eat at Edo Sushi Bar & Grill, which is where Haley and I used to work. It was busy at that time too. Since sushi was BOGO 1/2, I ordered a Volcano Roll and Tuna Roll. It completely slipped my mind at the time when I was ordering, but I guess I was in a tuna mood.

Not pictured, but Stephen ordered the Yaki Bento Box. That has a Cali roll, fried rice, yaki, carrots, and a crab rangoon. I at the rangoon since Stephen’s not a fan of cream cheese.

I hadn’t had coffee at this point during the day and I had a headache throughout lunch. [I know, that’s bad, and I acknowledge my reliance on coffee.] We stopped at my favorite place to grab my regular order of an Iced Latte [or Coffee] with Caramel and Toasted Almond. With the iced latte, I get sugar and light ice. A coffee is with sugar and cream with light ice. Sometimes they give you light ice, most, they don’t. But hey, it’s worth a mention.

It’s a similar taste to the Butter Pecan, which I absolutely adore, but it’s not as sweet. They never seem to have that ice cream flavor for long it seems.

Mom wanted to put up the tree that night, so here’s a picture of Mason in front of the tree. In the background was a football game my dad was watching at the time, haha.

My mom took me to Lowe’s to buy some Christmas tree ornaments and stuff. Haley and Reece are lending this mini tree that’s 4′ 1/2″. I’m 5’2″, so it was a perfect size for us!

The tree skirt was one that my mom bought in China when she adopted me. She wanted to give to me someday, so here we are, 24 years later!

It definitely lights up our apartment and this is our first tree that we actually put up. At the time of this picture, there were no presents wrapped, but there are some under the tree now.

I’ll stop the post here, but the next one should catch us up back to present day. I’ll have to post a bit earlier since Christmas Eve will be busy, so I’ll try to work around that.

Questions:

• Do you prefer Dunkin’ or Starbucks?
• Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving food or dessert?
• How do you feel about hibachi style restaurants?

I can’t wait to read and see what everyone else is up to!