Thanksgiving is possibly my favorite holiday.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas, but there is just something about Thanksgiving (maybe it’s the fact that it’s just one day and you don’t have to worry about buying gifts) that makes it feel amazing and special.

What do you do for Thanskgiving?  For the past several years Chris and I have celebrated with our friends.  Usually he has to work and in the past I’ve had to work too, not on the day but on the days around, so we aren’t able to travel.  I consider this a blessing—I hate traveling at the same time as everybody else!  I enjoy travel and going new places, but not at the same time as the rest of the country.  For instance, when we go on our honeymoon, it should be LESS busy because it will be right after the New Year.

I got an email from Laura who is hostess for this year (second year in a row, she’s amazing!) with the menu.  Oh my goodness.  It is a fantastic looking menu.  Turkey, two kinds of stuffing, potatoes, brussel sprouts salad, other vegetables, mac and cheese, cheesecakes (yes, plural), bread pudding…we are going to be so fat by the end of the day!  I can’t wait!

I want (need) to go for a run today but my legs are super sore from yesterday’s workout.  Too many lunges!  I will try anyway, the twitter consensus is that I should go out slow and it will help.  Speaking of consensuses, there certainly isn’t one as far as my wedding day makeup goes.  Some people love it, some think I should wear no makeup at all, some like parts and not others.  Who knew makeup was so controversial, haha?

I’ve probably used that title before.  Sorry!

Today I slept in.  After yesterday’s half marathon, I needed it.  How am I feeling?  Pretty good.  My hip is still pretty sore—I iced and rolled it a bit.  My calves are sore too so I’ve been wearing my compression socks all day.  Otherwise I’m pretty good.  My ankle might be a bit tired as well as my knee…this is all on the right leg.  Must be my longer leg?

Then I had three hours of teaching.  One of my youngest students was a particular challenge today and I feel like I didn’t stay on task with him as much as I would have liked.  I’ll have to do better with him next week.

After teaching Chris and I went to Eau Bistro to try a few things.  We are having our rehearsal dinner there and had only been for Easter Brunch before, never for dinner, so we wanted to try it.  It was awesome!  Even on a Monday night, the service was impeccable and the food was delicious.  I feel confident that our rehearsal dinner will be wonderful.

Life is getting busier over the next few weeks.  I’m looking forward to it.  More importantly, I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving…one of my absolute favorite holidays.  We are spending it with friends and it should be fantastic.  I am making a couple of desserts.

Secrets of adulthood:  Sometimes even when things are a disaster and you are fighting with somebody you love, you still stop in the middle of it to watch Burn Notice.  As a child, you would never think you could put your emotions on hold and do something unrelated and pretend that everything is fine.  As an adult, you realize that life goes on, sometimes you need a break, and sometimes you just want to take your mind off things and watch Burn Notice.  Whatever you are fighting about will still be there afterwards.  This goes for all different things, i.e. sometimes you have to answer a work call in the middle of a personal crisis, or you have to go to work even when you are upset, or sometimes you have to stay in a situation until you can leave and go cry in the bathroom.  (This I learned in school—there was a bathroom at my college that invariably some girl would be crying in—we would stick it out as long as needed and then ultimately run down the hall and collapse in the bathroom stall, coming out later and pretending nothing had happened.) 

30 days of Thanksgiving:  I’m thankful for delicious food and wine.  I had a fantastic dinner this evening with Chris and we both enjoyed everything we ordered.  I can’t wait to share that food with my closest friends and family.

Today is the first online bake sale I am participating in.  You can bid on my pumpkin bread and the proceeds go to "Kisses for Katie."  Go to Running Ricig’s blog here for more information or to make a bid!

At the end of September I read about a "foodie pen pal" food exchange on Food, Sweat, and Beers, a blog I like to read.  It sounded like fun, so I signed up at the Lean Green Bean.

The rules:

Foodie Penpals
1. On the 5th of every month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact each other and get mailing addresses and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.
2. You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. This will ensure everyone receives their goodies in time to post about them.
3. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal! Feel free to write your post as soon as your get your goodies if you want, just don’t publish it until the last day of the month. Please also include the basic information about Foodie Penpals and provide my email (theleangreenbean@gmail.com) in case people are interested in joining for the next month. 
4. The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15.
5. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box to a fun recipe…use your imagination!
6. You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)
7.  If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you can choose to write a short guest post for the blogger to feature on their blog to show off what they sent you.
8. If two readers get paired together, no one has to worry about writing a post 🙂

I got paired to give a box to Alexis at Fit-Possible and to receive a box from Lindsay.  I’ll let Alexis tell the story on her blog, but I was stressed trying to figure out what to buy!  I hope I did okay—I sent some stuff that I enjoy this time of year, and I hope it shipped out okay too.

It turned out, however, that Lindsay lives in St Louis!  In fact, she teaches at a school near where I teach, so we decided to meet in person for her to give me the package, to save money, to save worrying about packaging, and to meet another crazy person who likes to read blogs and run.

Lindsay seemed really nice and sweet. We chatted briefly about teaching and running—we were both running the St Louis Rock and Roll Half Marathon.  I had to get ready for work then, but I had a lovely bag of gifts! 

I decided to open it on my infamous rug.  My cat was super curious as to what was going on!

An absolutely adorable card!  The dog reminds me of my cat and how she hates music.

It’s a small world.

I haven’t tried these yet but will soon!

I opened the dark chocolate peanut butter.  My goodness, this stuff is ridiculously delicious.  I may have gained ten pounds from it already.  I almost bought more at Target but I think that would be a terrible idea.

All in all, I LOVED opening these gifts.  It’s been a crazy month so I haven’t gotten to cooking anything yet, but I hope to try the Enchilada recipe soon in particular as I love Mexican food.  Thanks Lindsay, for a wonderful bag of food!!

I can’t wait to see what next month brings…