the day after

Babysitting is super productive I'm learning tonight. At least when the baby in question is less than 3 months old and sleeps like a stud. I'm in Den Haag watching Emerson, son of my dear friends Adrienne and Nic Grimes. They're out on a rare date. I'm getting so much done, I've even whittled down my inbox to 4995 unread emails! Yes, I NEVER delete emails. I'm trying to turn a new leaf since I'm tired of people freaking out when they look at my desktop.

Despite my productive stint, I'm actually quite exhausted but I don't think it's from a long day or an hour train trip or not sleeping enough, rather from turkey that I'm sure is still sitting in my stomach. Gobbling. I'm used to abnormally large things, I'm from the land that invented abnormally large things, yet this truly was the largest turkey I've ever seen. There was a collective gasp when Amanda and John unveiled the beast at our Thanksgiving dinner last night. This picture does not even begin to describe how much meat there was on that big boy. Let's just say that the 24 of us ate less than 1/4 of it.

It was a great Thanksgiving. I spend the day hopping between the Nashes and Pickerills, cooking delicious things, decorating, baking nana's roll recipe, and lots of skyping with dear friends and family. I enjoyed meeting new people during the dinner and just sitting around and chilling. In true T-day tradition Connor even rented a film for us and we had a sleepover after the cleaning up was done. We have, for the most part, switched to Dutch holidays, but this is the one American holiday that we keep alive and well. Julia and I threaten every year to go buy little roasted chickens but between Amanda and Connor we are kept to the straight and narrow. Toward the end of the night I escaped to the kid's room and watched a bit of Monsters Inc. with them, trying to let the effects of the tryptophan wane enough to help clean up.

Emerson is starting to stir a bit so I will close. If you come from the Thanksgiving celebrating tradition, I hope it was a wonderful holiday for you, with lots of family and good friends nearby.