Of course no holiday is complete without some good old fashioned family togetherness time. We had a blast hanging out with Piper on Thanksgiving morning. When we showed up, her nurse had dressed her in a super festive little outfit, complete with an orange ribbon in her hair. She was walking around by her crib acting as cute as possible (above).  She was being equal parts playful and snuggly.

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For whatever reason, Piper is obsessed with shoes and feet. In this case, she could not get over my boots. I had them propped up on the top of her mini-piano, and she jumped out of Reagan’s lap to come check them out. When I started playing peek-a-boo, by opening and closing my feet, so that she could see my face, it was too much for her to handle. She was cracking up.

We also did horsey rides and a modified version of airplane rides. Check Reagan’s blob for a video of that action. A few more photos from our T-day visit with Piper (and T-day generally), over here.

We got the pre-game going on Wednesday night, of course. Reagan had already received a huge order from Fresh Direct, and stopped by Gristedes on the way home. But of course, that did not preclude me having to rush back out to the bodega, as soon as I walked in the door from work. So, after buying a $10 bottle of pure cranberry juice, along with some fresh sage and rosemary leaves (for the turkey brine), we rolled up our sleeves and got after it. Reagan made three pies: Apple (below), Pumpkin (above) and Chocolate.

I whipped up some turkey brine, dropped in the turkey and put it out on the fire escape to marinate over night. After doing all of this, and a bunch of other stuff, we finally retired to the couch to watch the second half of a James Bond movie. Syfi, is having a JB marathon all weekend. Around 2ish, we finally called it a night.

We got up kind of early (by holiday standards) and headed up to Westchester to hang out with Piper (I’ll write more about that in a different post). We got back to our pad around 12:30 or one. I fired up the oven and got the turkey going. Note, this is the first time that I have ever attempted to cook a turkey. After 6 hours of meticulous tending (and a cat nap), this is what I pulled out of the oven:

I wish that I would have thought to get a shot of it before I started carving it up. It was juicy and delicious. I had to give myself a pat on the back for that one. Since we don’t really have a dining table, Reagan made some cute little place settings at either end of the coffee table, where we sat on the floor and ate our T-day dinner together. I hope that everyone else had an awesome Thanksgiving!

This is the first year, since Piper has been around, that we have been in town for Thanksgiving  weekend. In the past we have spent it in New England with our Boston friends. It was kind of nice, not to be traveling, this year. It was extra nice to be able to see Piper on Thanksgiving. Of course, Reagan whipped up a festive turkey headband for Piper, at the last minute. Piper wasn’t too keen on having it around her head. But she was a good sport for the photo. We had a lot of fun teaching her about why we celebrate the first day that people ate turkey.

Something happened during our visit that was extra fun for me. I finally figured out something that makes Piper laugh. Normally Reagan is the only one that can crack Piper up. But yesterday, when I was holding her. She started tapping me on the mouth, like she does quite often. As she was doing this, I started pretending to eat her fingers. Apparently she thought that was pretty funny, because she started cracking up. Then I started cracking up. Good times had by all.

BTW, Reagan is now officially obsessed with her iPhone, which is where this photo came from. She has an application that renders photos to look like old Polaroids.

We had a total freaking blast (as usual) in Boston for Thanksgiving. We drove up Wednesday evening, which didn’t end up being very bad, since we stayed clear of 95. Thursday morning I went with Tadd and played a little turkey bowl. I have learned not to travel on Thanksgiving without my cleats. There were about 35 guys there, so we had 4 teams on 2 different fields. The weather was perfect. I didn’t even have to wear a jacket.

For dinner, we assembled at the house of a close friend of the Truscotts. It was a great setup. Tadd did the turkey, which came out amazing. After eating we played rock band for the rest of the evening. It is going to be tough for us when those guys move. We are hoping that Tadd gets a teaching job at Cornell. Ithica is just a hop skip and a jump away from us. You can check out the rest of the pictures here.

Tonight we will be heading up to Bean Town to spend Thanksgiving with our Boston homies. Here is a picture from last year. My two best friends from high school both live in the Boston area. We are pretty bummed out about the prospect that this is most likely the last time, for a while that we will be able to have Thanksgiving with the Truscotts, since they will be moving when Tadd graduates. Hopefully the Petreys will stick around.

Anyway, I love this holiday for many reasons. I remembered just how much, when I woke up this morning to the aroma of pies baking. Mmmm. Thanks for that, Reagan.

To keep this post nice and non sequitur, I have to share something that Reagan told me last night, that made me laugh pretty hard. We were getting ready for bed and she said “Jake, I don’t like my vampire book anymore. It’s boring. I want the guy to eat the girl, because he is a vampire. Instead they are just getting all in love and crap.” So awesome.