Happy December, everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend filled with family, food, and relaxation.  We always do Thanksgiving with my Dad’s side of the family, who traveled from Massachusetts, North Carolina, and that state up north to my parent’s house in Cleveland for the long weekend (and my brother flew in from NYC!  We missed you, Atlee – she’s in Israel!).  It was a loud, fun, loving weekend together.  Some highlights:

1.   All. The. Food.  aka, “Ode to Laurie Chait”

I could (and probably should) write an entire blog post dedicated to my Mom, the hostess.  Words cannot begin to describe the amount of preparation and work that goes into welcoming ~10 people for 4 days straight.  I know there are plenty of families with larger Thanksgiving Dinners than mine, but most people don’t start the feast the day before and end it three days after!  Over the course of Wed – Sat, my mom fed everyone multiple meals, just one of which was Thanksgiving dinner, and all of which were homemade: three types of soup and grilled cheese, a Mediterranean feast, and chili (along with many many leftovers). We only “ate out” once – pizza Saturday night (served with salad, of course)!  She ran the dishwasher three times PER DAY – which means she unloaded the dishwasher three times PER DAY.  Now, of course my brother, Dad, and I pitched in, but as only the woman of the household can understand, when it’s your house…things are just different.

Mom, you’re the best.  I can only hope to be as gracious and warm a hostess as you one day!

2.  Cards Against Humanity
A couple of weeks ago I bought Cards Against Humanity – “A party game for horrible people”.  If you’ve never played the game, I insist you buy yourself an early Christmas present and gather a group of your most raunchy friends (or in my case at Wyatt’s Friendsgiving, total strangers) for hours of hysterical laughter.  My brother and I were just about to start a rip-roaring game of Scrabble when he said to me, “You know what we should do sometime?  Play Cards Against Humanity with this group.”  I stared at him and said, “I have it upstairs!”.  Siblings thinking alike.  So we gathered up the crew minus the little girls (sorry, Devon and Dylan – soon enough you’ll be old enough for highly inappropriate humor!), sat around the fireplace, and spent the next two hours laughing uncontrollably and being surprisingly (and somewhat strangely) comfortable with the amount of dirty things being said by our parents and other more “mature” relatives.  We played until there were no cards left.  I’d call that a win!  #newtradition.

3.  “The StairMaster Incident”
On Saturday morning before “The Game”, my Dad took me, my brother, and my cousins Debbie and Talya to his gym to work off one bite of pecan pie.  After taking Debbie and Talya through this workout, Talya and I hopped on side-by-side StairMasters for a little calorie-burn, 80’s style.  I’ve been using the StairMaster at my trainer’s gym, and the one there has the user input “steps per minute”, which are typically between 80-100 for me.  So, I entered in “90”, but this StairMaster was programmed by level and not steps per minute….meaning my entry of “90” took the machine up to its max level of speed, 20.  Which was probably the equivalent of 180 steps per minute!  It started racing, and before I could figure out how to stop it I had crashed to the ground.  Aside from a banged up ankle I was totally fine, and highly amused  – especially when the old man running the front desk rushed over to ask me if he should call “9-11”. So, yeah…that happened.

4.  OSU vs. M*ch*gan
OSU: 42.  M*ch*gan: 28.  Need I say more?  Never mind how we got there (with great difficulty) and the fact that our star second-string QB is now hurt (poor JT…).  The right team won!

5.  Family
Despite all the craziness that comes with this weekend every year, I’m so so so grateful that everyone makes the effort to travel far and wide to be together.  I’m very lucky to have such a fun, lively, supportive family where anything goes and everyone can be themselves.  I love you all, and look forward to seeing you again in 360ish days!

What were the highlights of your Thanksgiving weekend?