Hey everyone!
It sure has been a ghost town here! That's partly my fault. Scott and I were in Canada for our friends' wedding -- which was absolutely lovely and amazing. Coming back and using AP was no fun. The woman at the booth we drove up to was a total ######, and then we had to go inside and wait and wait, and it took an hour and a half. When we got home, though, we were greeted with Scott's Green Card, so we won't have to deal with that again! That's good since we're going back to Canada this weekend, this time to Montreal (to scope out wedding venues!! I am so excited!)
I don't think I wished you a happy birthday, Gillian, so happy belated birthday!
Now I'm back at work -- 12 hour days, plus I'm sick. Really sick.
Yuck.
Aly, I can tell you a little about what my vision of Thanksgiving is. I LOVE Thanksgiving! Why? Because it is a holiday of eating! haha I know you've been talking about diets but on this day you can go crazy and eat and eat. Maybe it's because I like to cook and I usually spend the whole day sipping wine and either cooking or helping the cook, depending on whether I'm hosting or with family or what. A lot of American families watch football during the day. Personally, it's not my thing, but I wouldn't be doing my duty to not mention it. If you go to someone's house for Thanksgiving, expect there to be a game on. And men sitting on the couch drinking beer while women cook.
Which is sort of a good thing, as it keeps them out of the way.
Some families like to eat Thanksgiving dinner really early in the day, like at noon or 1pm. I tend to prefer later, like 5. And normally I eat dinner at 8, 9, 10pm, whenever I have time, so even that is an early dinner. You can really do whatever you want, but if you have a super early dinner, be prepared to cook some the day before or get up super early to start preparing.
It's traditional to cook a turkey as the main course. Other traditional dishes would be mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie (anything with squash really), um... we always have bread or biscuits and salad and olives out, though I don't know how traditional they are. I like to make butternut squash soup for a starter. Cranberry sauce and stuffing are definite side dishes. Hmm, what else am I forgetting? Anyone want to chime in here?
Also, for those who didn't know, Thanksgiving is the most widely celebrated holiday in the States, likely due to the fact that it is not a religious holiday (Scott, being the cute Jew that he is, thought it was
) and the fact that it is always on a Thursday and therefore many people get a 4-day weekend out of it. It's the most travelled holiday of the year as well. The Friday after Thanksgiving is now the biggest shopping day in the US, I guess b/c with Thanksgiving over, it is officially okay to get the Christmas celebrations in gear.
It's fun. It's basically just cooking and eating and having time to relax.
Well, unless you have a big stressful family... I guess then it might not be so fun. Since Scott will have to work the day after I've decided I'm going to host this year.
At least next year we will *definitely* be going back to the UK for Christmas!!!
As soon as we get a car we are going to be laughing - Gas prices here have gone from 4.50 to 3.37 and still seem to be dropping which is a great help as Jeremy drives 32 miles a day to work and back and that isn't taking into consideration going anywhere else like the store and things. His credit cards have taken a hammering as he prefers to do that than tell me we have no money and can't afford things 
so we have prolly over $3000 on cards which is really bad. As soon as I have a job, all of his money is going on the usual bills/rent etc. but any leftover is going to go towards paying off his cards. Money I earn might help out there as well just to get it all paid off sooner, but then I want to use a lot of my money to save towards a deposit for a house and leave a bit of disposable income to have some kind of social life!
what a mess