Thanksgiving with the Family

Despite the horrible start, my family's visit went great!  We had such a fun week of touring and eating our way through North Yorkshire.  We crammed a lot of activity into a short amount of time, so here's a brief recap of my favorite activities:

• Spending time together:

My family is really nerdy, but we have so much fun together.  We love playing board games (Yahtzee, though technically not a board game, is our favorite) and we do a lot of silly things.  Here's an example of how nerdy we are: my sister and mom bought the three of us matching pajamas!  We spent all week in them.  We even made a video of us jumping around in our pjs. 

We also played a really fun game where we split into teams and did a blind taste test to see who has the best palate.  We used items like relish, raw onion and  pecorino cheese.  See...I told you we are nerdy.  It was hilarious though.

• Eating delicious food:

Thanksgiving is easily one of my top-two favorite holidays of the year (Passover is the other one).  I love everything about it!  The food, the Macy's parade, the cool weather and the family.  I'm so glad that for my first Thanksgiving overseas I was able to still have all of it!  Dan even found a special broadcast of the parade.  It was a really cool behind-the-scenes look.

We weren't sure whether we'd be able to do Thanksgiving the way we wanted to this year, but we were fortunate enough to find everything we needed...even a kosher turkey!  The smallest bird we could find was 20 pounds!!  I was seriously concerned that it wouldn't fit in my easy bake oven.  It did, but we had to buy three different roasting pans until we found one that fit in the oven!  My dad saved the day by bringing one from Walmart.  Dan had to adjust it a little bit by hammering the handles flat, but it worked!

We made the full spread, including three different pies; two types of potatoes; two cranberry sauces and lots more.  We were too excited to eat to capture proper pictures, but here's one of the table:

• Visiting great sites:

We crammed a ton of site-seeing into a short amount of time.  I love going to little villages for a pub-lunch and stopping in the mom-and-pop stores to see the amazing crafts.  We also saw the beautiful Fountains Abbey and Bolton Abbey. 

Playing darts in a Dales pub

Bolton Abbey

Outside Bolton Abbey

Knaresborough

Of course there is so much more to share, but this is already way too long.  We had a great week and I was definitely sad to see it end.  Hopefully they'll be back out to visit again soon though!