I’ll get to the being cut open thing in short order, but first things first – let’s go back to Thanksgiving. It was a pretty fabtastic and warrants a pretty big shout out!
The Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving was food-prep day, we got in what we needed and I washed, peeled and cut everything that needed washing, peeling and cutting. It was all put in containers of cold water and in the fridge.
The turkey on the left is the smoked turkey our landlady gave to us, (two years in a row now and delicious to boot!), the bag at the back is a 3lb honey roast ham and the meat at the front right of the picture is an oven roasted turkey breast that we’d bought in – and to think I almost bought a leg of lamb too! Man the place was coming down with meat! LOL! As you can also see from the picture, we had a drawer full of beer (not bad for non beer drinkers, eh?), we went with some good ole Texan Shiner Bock!
We’d also managed to track down some nice, Martinellis non-alcoholic apple cider which we’d tried at our landlady’s house while the in-laws were in town and picked up another brand or two to try just to see how it compared. We decided that we’re going to remain Apple Cider snobs and stick with Martinelli’s as there’s a smoothness to it that the others didn’t have.
Thursday was more food preparation, I finished off the food prep from the previous night, started cooking and Col cleaned and tidied ahead of people arriving.
First to arrive were the Van der Waals; a lovely English couple we met through the SSA. Some of the only other ‘young’ people who live out here with us and some of the most fun and friendly people we’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting!
We chatted for a while, whilst we waited for our other lovely English friends Magz and Sam to arrive with their 2 dogs Poppy and Bazil and their out of town guest Gary – who’d literally just landed from Cameroon and before long, the house was hot, we had 3 kinds of spuds, 2 kinds of carrots, plates overflowing with food and various beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic alike!).
We ate – most of us 2 (and some even 3) rounds of food (yes, there really was that much to chose from!), after dinner the men went into overdrive and cleaned up the kitchen at lightening speed, afterwhich, the 7 of us and 2 canine companions all got situated on the sofa to watch ‘Bad Boys’ in HD.
Before the movie we exchanged ‘non secret pilgrim presents’ – our own take on a secret santa exchange. Col and I had to buy for Magz and Sam, Magz and Sam had to buy for Emily and Luke and Emily and Luke had to buy for Col and I – $10 per person/$20 per couple.
We bought Magz and Sam a gift voucher for the Melting Pot, they’re teaming up with St Judes Childrens Hospital and were running a pay $10 get a $20 gift card promotion that we did (Magz is a dietician for kids so we thought it was apt!) and we got them some crayola bath crayon type thingies.
We got, the best basket of tasty treats around!
Emily and Luke bought me (yes, me, not us!) a box of my favourite Starbucks peppermint hot chocolate, some fudge, some chocolate sticks (for hot drinks), some shortbread (among other things) and brought us a jar of their home made chutney, which will be ready to go around Christmas time!
During the movie, Em and Luke had to go home (Em had work the next morning) and when we’d done with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, we watched in horror at the American version of Top Gear – which, pretty much, rips off the UK TG and doesn’t do it even half as well. I’ve since told Col I’m not watching it again cause it makes me angry! LOL!
That night, we had a sleep over. Magz, Sam, Gary and the two dogs all crashed here with us and on Friday morning, we hit up Denny’s for a lovely brunch once everyone was up and showered.
That evening, we were supposed to go to see the Aeros play, but we were just so utterly knackered that we spent the night on the sofa, under a duvet, watching Ice Road Truckers: Deadliest Roads, while eating copious amounts of Dairy Milk chocolate! It was heaven!
Saturday night, we made it up to the Toyota Centre for hockey – even though neither of us were particularly fussed about going. We went cause we already had tickets. However, we came out wondering why we questioned going in the first place! Turns out we’ve quite the squad this year and the games we’ve gone to see have been real barn-burners. We really enjoyed it, the guys are working hard and doing well and I’m looking forward to our next game…gotta get my hockey bug back, as I seem to have misplaced it lately!
Sunday we did stuff around the house, Col hung pictures and laid mulch, I did laundry, tidied and yet again tried to return the house to some semblance of order – which, STILL hasn’t happened – and we’re 6 weeks down the road after the wedding, I swear, one of these days!!
Anyways, Thanksgiving is turning out to be quite the Expat occasion here in the McMaster household. Last year we had Julie, Sherif and Zane, Col’s parents and Sharon and Chris dropped by for a glass of wine and slice of Apple pie, this year we had the Van der Waals, the Maddens and Gary and I think next year we’ll keep up the tradition with whoever else wants to come by for some turkey – and maybe we’ll try a turducken…ok, maybe not!
It was much fun and, although I was the only one to do so, this year I did at least say what I was thankful for. It’s a rare occasion I’m sure, when someone is thankful for Schlumberger (for those of you who don’t know us at all that’s the company Col and many of our friends work for!) but, without the company, we’d not have had the pleasure of getting to know any of the people who were sat around our table this Thanksgiving and as such I’m truly thankful for Col’s job, because the people we had dinner with that night are genuinely some of the best people I’ve ever met and I’m really honoured to be able to call them my friends…