Thanksgiving preparations

The first Thanksgiving dinner I ever flew solo on in the kitchen was also my first Thanksgiving with Matt (and, incidentally, took place over a year after our wedding d/t a speedy courtship and then my deploying a week after we tied the knot).  I innocently thought the entire meal could be prepared on Thanksgiving day [after sleeping in, no less!] and ended up highly stressed and with a broken Kitchen-Aid stand mixer about 2h into it.  Nowadays, I spread my shopping out over the week prior (I always try to get 15 items at a time from the commissary during busy weeks so I can just zoom through the self checkout aisle) and start cooking 1-2 days before.

Pix from our first Thanksgiving together...I cannot believe how young Matt looks!  I think I always look the same, lol.  Not sure if that's too good a thing though...

I love the combination of fancy wedding china and us basically wearing pajamas...lol.  In our defense, we had just moved to CA from Japan less than a month prior and our main furniture had not even arrived yet.  We are eating on a small square folding table on loan from the Airman's Attic.

Matt is enjoying 4 1/2 days off to celebrate and get some family time R&R (and, on a side note, he flew his first acrobatic routine yesterday--consisting of flips and sideway S's) and we are fortunate to have another visitor this week, one of my brothers--who is also the girls' godfather.  The girls and I made the extremely boring drive to OKC today to pick him up (seriously, the most interesting sites are extremely large [wolf-like] roadkill that we have seen on each of our last 4 trips out of Enid and various types of junkyards).  Even though it is only 2h, I always need to arm myself with coffee--particularly as there is hardly anywhere to stop along the road should the boredom start to take its toll.

On another note, I finally learned why it is so small-town out here, despite the presence of a very populated and single officer-heavy air base.  The flat and vacant fields that stretch for miles to every side of Vance are absolutely perfect for emergency landings, should a student ever encounter a problem in the air.  We are acclimating well to Enid, and always try to break the long airport drive up with lunch and window-shopping at the OKC Mall.  :O)  Girls are huuuuge Disney store fanatics.

Now that we are home from our drive, I am prepping for my first gluten free and dairy-light Thanksgiving.  I am basically combining recipes from two of my favorite blogs (a gluten free one and a crock pot one) and my brother is preparing a poached fruit dessert.  We are planning on a fun day of board games and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (we did not have a TV service last year, so this will be a huge treat for the girls!).  Either Thursday or Friday, we are planning on a trip to the movies, to watch the new Muppet flick--a childhood favorite of Matt, my brother, and mine--and a cast the girls adore too.  The big question is...will be brave the poorly-reviewed, but conveniently-located Oakwood Mall Theater or drive to the cute little 3-screen we passed while driving through Kingfisher, OK (about 30-40min away).  I am leaning toward the latter.