Thanksgiving

This year our Thanksgiving holiday was a bit unconventional but definitely a memorable one.  We planned a very big weekend.  Thanksgiving morning we woke up at 4:30 AM to catch a train into the city for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  We found a good spot on Central Park South near the beginning of the parade route and had over 2 hours to spare until the parade began at 9am.  We both enjoyed watching all the balloons and bands march by.  The balloon handlers were amazing and it was funny when they started chanting their balloon's name and got the crowd involved.  Although the performers only sang at the end of the parade at Macy's, we got to see Jessica Simpson, Kanye West and several other performers up close on their floats.

After the parade, we went to the Carnegie Deli for lunch (a non-traditional Thanksgiving meal!).  We were not brave enough to each get our own sandwich so we split a Pastrami and Fried Egg on Rye sandwich....very delicious!

We headed home to Ramsey for an afternoon nap and then woke up at 5pm to take the train to the Jets/Bengals game at the new stadium at the Meadowlands.  We got heckled by quite a few Jets fans while wearing our Bengals gear.... my favorite was a 5-year old girl who was boo-ing me while we left the stadium.  It was not much of a game for Bengals fans - the Bengals had a lead going into halftime but weren't able to hold it against the much more talented Jets. But we did get to see the Jets superfan "Fireman Ed" in action - he was in our section - and we sampled the stadium fare, having a delicious meatball sandwich and an italian pork sandwich.

The day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year, so being a Toys R Us employee now, Katie volunteered to work in one of stores.  The company always asks for volunteers for Black Friday to help customers and appreciate the core of our business.  I signed up for a later shift, so I did not see the craziness of the 5am shoppers, but it was still very busy at 1pm.

On Saturday, we cooked our first turkey ever.  Everything turned out pretty well, except Katie forgot to take the gizzard package out of the neck of the turkey.  We also made sausage stuffing, roasted tomatoes and took the easy route with instant mashed potatoes and gravy.  Overall, our first Thanksgiving cooking experience was a tasty success - Griffey thought the Turkey tasted excellent!