Thanksgiving Weekend: A Re-Cap

Thanksgiving weekend was a blast - a perfect mix of lots of fun with family & friends, and also plenty of downtime and relaxation.  I'm so sad that it's already over!  Here's how it all went down:

Friday afternoon, they let me off early around 3 PM, so I scooted my butt home and got to work right away!  I had cookies to bake!  I offered up homemade cookies in the Canada Day Committee's fundraising auction last spring, and one of the winners had called in their cookies for the weekend.  One of the other winners had told me they'd take their cookies anytime, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone, and baked 'em all at once.  Once the cookies were done, I had a little downtime before book club, so I settled in and watched the first movie off my Halloween Movie Bucket List:  Pet Sematary!  One of my all-time Stephen King faves!

Just before 7 PM, I headed to my friend Lolly's, as she was hosting our book club group that night.  We enjoyed delicious snacks, lots of great girl talk, and I got some twin snuggles in.  Oh, and yes, we did talk a bit about the book we read. LOL!  It was The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson, which I read months ago, and while the book was OK and a quick read, it wasn't my favourite one ever.  I think my expectations were too high, because they promoted it as even better than Gone Girl, and I completely disagree with that assessment.  I think books should stop being compared to Gone Girl, it seems to happen way too often and I have yet to hit upon one that causes my jaw to drop like Gone Girl did.  Regardless, it was great to sit and visit with the ladies, I felt like I was long over-due for a girls night.

Saturday morning, I was up fairly early and after sipping a coffee and getting ready for the day, I set to editing the family photos I had taken for my friend Caryl and her family the weekend before.  I wanted to get that session edited before the next one came up.  While I edited, I put on some more scary movies - first, The Conjuring, and then The Amityville Horror (Ryan Reynolds edition).  Before I knew it, the pictures were all done, the cookies had been picked up, and I was packed up and ready to head to my mom's for our Thanksgiving celebration!

Our Thanksgiving started by going up to Shawville to watch my nephew Caden play in his first hockey game of the season.  After they had chalked up their first W of the year, we returned to Mom's for a delicious turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and some great family time.  After dinner, we retreated to the living room to watch the Sens game, and enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving Miracle, watching them beat the Leafs. ;)  It was a fabulous day all around!

Sunday morning I slept in a little before getting up and getting ready for church.  The church was decorated beautifully, and it was an uplifting Communion service with lots of people out.  After church we went to Mom's for brunch, and I was suddenly hit by a headache.  It came out of nowhere, and it wasn't pleasant.  Kara put some of her Peppermint Halo stuff on the back of my neck, I took some Advil, and hit the couch.  Danica stayed with me to watch TV, while the rest of them went on a back road fall drive.  My headache had eased up by suppertime, and we had Thanksgiving Dinner Round 2.  Just enough leftovers to have a complete repeat of Saturday night's dinner.  Yum!!  And Mom was happy to get rid of most of the leftovers, so it was a win-win.

Monday started out kind of wonky.  I was up fairly early again and the headache was completely gone, thank gosh, so I lounged around crocheting while I watched the movie The Babadook on Netlfix, sipped coffee, in no rush... I was heading to my friend Sara's to take their family photos at 11 AM, and had nothing to do until then.  UNTIL...I checked my email and had a reminder from my editor at the Equity to send my notes in as usual despite the holiday.  Whoops!!  I had totally forgotten about that!!  So then the scramble was on.  I rushed to write my notes and get them submitted, get myself ready, and get on the road to Sara's on time.  It made for a sweaty, scrambly hour! haha!   I took photos (and it went SO well!) and had a little visit with the Dowes, then headed home for lunch.

I had been thinking wistfully of those cookies I baked on Friday and shipped out for others to enjoy, and decided to make some of my own.  I had the Sens game on and spent the afternoon baking, decorating for Halloween, and just enjoying some downtime. 

Then I made a REALLY big mistake.  I decided to watch another scary movie from my Halloween Movie Bucket List, one I had never seen before : M. Night Shyamalan's The Visit.  BAD IDEA.  I don't know why, but this movie really got under my skin and creeped me right the f*ck out.  Worse than probably any scary movie I've watched in recent memory. It totally gave me the heebie-jeebies, and as dark fell, all I could picture was this grey long-haired old lady running around my house and hiding under my bed.  Ugh.  Needless to say... nightlight on, and not a lot of good quality sleep that night, despite the multiple episodes of New Girl that I filled the evening with in an attempt to squash the memories of The Visit.  *sigh*

So I might be done with the scary movie list for a while.  I mean, I still want to do my Disney Ichabod movie, and of course I'm still excited for Scary Movie Marathon, but I might not bother with the rest.  The Visit might have been enough for me for a while.  *shudder*

Overall - despite regretting that one movie - it was an awesome weekend, and I wish we could just have a do-over because it all went by too fast.  I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful weekend too! :)