Monday, November 30, 2009

Turkey Day.

It was a very unusual but fantastic Thanksgiving this year.

Marc and I usually do the traditional Thanksgiving at our house, or go to my parents house. Either way, we spend the day watching the parade, cooking the food, and watching It's A Wonderful Life after supper while decorating the house for the Christmas season.

This year, we woke up in our gorgeous hotel room at the Hilton St. Louis Downtown, ordered delicious room service (coconut and pecan crusted french toast for me, and eggs and potatoes for Marc), and then walked down to the parade route for the St. Louis Thanksgiving Day Parade.

We heard MJ, the Tampa morning show DJ's, voice coming from a radio station tent and wandered over to say hello. Since I lived in St. Louis before I lived in Tampa and St. Petersburg, I knew that they are one of the markets that plays MJ in the morning. When we went over there and started chatting, the people working there gave us two free tickets to sit in the bleachers to watch the parade from the old courthouse.

After grabbing a very warm and delicious Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks, we grabbed our seats on the bleachers, which had an amazing view of the Arch. We watched the floats, bands and balloons(which were lacking helium, and dragging on the road a bit) go by, often centered in the Arch from our view.

It all made for some really cool pictures, which will be seen in a ridiculously huge photo posting that I will do after we get all settled in at home.

After the parade, we raced back up to our hotel room (so I could defrost) and caught the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. Hearing Al, Matt and Meredith (how I miss Katie on Thanksgiving) really made it feel like Thanksgiving for me. Following the parade was the National Dog Show. I spent the rest of our time in the hotel room pointing out to Marc which dogs I "absolutely have to have."

Shortly thereafter, Lisa's friend Kassy, (who came to visit us in Florida when Lisa came down for vacation) picked us up and dropped us off at Lisa's Mom's house in Collinsville, Illinois. Since nobody was there at the time, we took a walk down to my parent's old house, just down the street from Lisa's parents. We trespassed in the backyard so I could show Marc the windows to my old room and the deck on the pond where I used to sit and talk on the phone as a teenager.

After our trespassing adventure, we went back to Lisa's parents house to wait for Lisa and her fiance and hung out with her Mom's dog, Prince, a little chihuahua who vibrates like my cell phone he shakes so fiercely. Less than an episode of Mythbusters later, (did you know that fourteen boxes of pepperoni pizza in the warmer things that delivery boys carry will stop a bullet from killing you?!) everybody showed up and we headed over to Lisa's grandparents house for their family Thanksgiving.

It was nice, and good to be around a big family for the holiday, but they had already eaten dinner by the time we got there! However, we were just in time for dessert, which was delicious. We even stuck around long enough for the leftover turkey to be pulled out for sandwiches, so we (kind of) got some Thanksgiving dinner in the end.

Afterwards, we were exhausted, and went back to Lisa and Zach's apartment to watch kiddie cartoons with their adorable son, Curtis, and work on the final planning for their wedding.

Definitely different from our normal Thanksgiving, but wonderful all the same.

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