Thanksgiving in the U.S.

In the middle of November, I flew back to Elmhurst, IL for a short visit to the U.S. to celebrate Thanksgiving with our family.  I was so happy to see my good friend Jane waiting for me when I got off the plane and had a wonderful visiting with her during my 3 weeks in town. I was able to tell Jane, and our friends, family and neighbors, that we are probably moving back to Elmhurst this summer, as Chris has been told he will be  moving to a new position located back in the U.S.  Jane was so happy she cried - which made me happy too! It was great to be able to take our house off the market - now we know why it didn't sell - and start moving furniture around and making a plan for moving back into our own house.

Chris arrived a few days after I did and then we drove to Watkins Glen, NY to meet up with our girls and spend Thanksgiving with my family.  We were both still a little jet-lagged, so we were able to start our 11-hour drive at 3 a.m.  We were lucky that the weather was pretty dry and above freezing on our drive - it makes it so much easier when we don't have to deal with snow and ice.

My sister Patty graciously put all 5 of us up for the week.  Chris and I arrived on Monday, Samantha arrived on Tuesday night, and then we picked up Elizabeth and Miranda on Wednesday.  Patty's daughter Lauren arrived on Wednesday as well, so we had a very full house.  We had some fun dinners out, saw the new Hunger Games movie, and played a lot of cards and games, as always.

Because we were planning to fly to Cambodia for Christmas week, we had our family Christmas gift exchange at Patty's house the night before Thanksgiving.  Good thing, because Samantha got a chance to use her new Kitchenaid stand mixer to make mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thursday's Thanksgiving Dinner was courtesy of my sister Cim and her husband, as they host for all of his family as well.  That made about 40 people for dinner in the church hall.  It was so nice to see (almost) all of my nephews, their spouses and kids, my niece, all 3 of my sisters and 2 brothers-in-law.  After dinner was over, everyone retired to Patty's house for football viewing, wine and games.

Again, because we wouldn't be in Watkins Glen (or even the U.S.) for Christmas, we brought all of our Christmas gifts for the family with us and had a mini-Christmas celebration at my sister Kate's house on Friday night, gifts and all.  Although it was hard to bid good-bye to everyone before we drove back to Elmhurst on Sunday, we knew we'd be seeing the girls again soon, wen they arrived in Shanghai.  All-in-all, this was a great holiday trip.




We had another two weeks in Elmhurst after Thanksgiving, which was a great chance to catch up with many friends.  I'm so lucky to be able to spend time with different groups of friends while I'm in town and am looking forward to living there full-time again to be able to do so more often.  Again, it was hard to leave when it came time to fly back to Shanghai, but we were both excited for the girls to arrive and start of family Christmas celebration in Shanghai and Cambodia.