happy thanksgiving!

 

Wishing you a warm holiday full of eggnog (too soon?), elastic pants and your mother’s clam dip.

p.s. I’ll be offline until Monday. You should be, too. Quit reading this and go eat something.

My Kind: Thanksgiving Traditions

 

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Thanksgiving is my all-time favorite holiday (I’m quite certain the bulk of carbs play a role in this decision), and in an effort to remember this day, I wanted to write down my very, very favorite Thanksgiving traditions. Join me in reminiscing?

1. Board games. I could host a board game party any night of the week, but Thanksgiving is the one day a year that my friends/family humor me and play along. Bonus? Both my mother and my sisters love to laugh, so when we play CatchPhrase, oh, it’s a time.
2. Beige food. My family always gathers in time for an inordinate amount of food, and I laugh every year at the color-coordinated shade of beige that exists: mashed potatoes, stuffing, turkey, white frozen marshmallow salad, gravy and rolls. And before you call blaspheme, I’ll note that Martin made this Tiramisu for his Thanksgiving select occasion, so we’re not entirely neutral. Entirely.  
3. Road trips. Our families live a few hours apart, so when I pack up the boys on most holidays and spend a few hours road tripping to whatever destination we’re headed that year. It’s my favorite time with them – tunes on the speakers and (most of the time!) snow falling outside. Magical.
4. Leftovers. Every year I can remember, I’ve snacked on a leftover turkey and mayonnaise sandwich on white bread. It’s a pretty gross combination, but I loved it as a kid and it makes me so nostalgic for childhood family get-togethers, so I still indulge (with a bit of salt and pepper now that I’m older!).
5. Movie marathons. We’re not a big football family, but we love The Home Alone marathon that plays every year (Morgen and I can recite that entire movie). After eating and games, we snuggle up on couches and tune into whatever holiday movie is looping at the moment – and usually stay there until it plays… oh, three times. It’s a beautiful study in laziness, and I look forward to it every year.

What do you do on Thanksgiving?

I’ll be up East visiting my parents through the Holiday, but will catch you here on Friday for the first in a looong series of gift guides! We’re going to have a beautiful season, friends. Promise.

A Peek Into Our Days, Currently

 

Fall, then.

We finished out the last bash of biking, gave ourselves one last hurrah of mountain mayhem. Martin saved a post-it note for himself, Sharpied on a smiley face and left it under my mouse. Spent the rest of this evening enjoying it along with Skip on a leash, the smiley dogs tail thumping and thrashing close behind.

Dinner at Sawadee? he asks.

I texted to say yes, had felt the right answer was yes. 

This morning, leftovers from dinner in a box.

Pair Up

My 10-year-old self loved many a fall days – air slick with freedom, elbows slick from apple juices. An entire universe whirling by from the banana seat of my lustrous pink Schwinn.

Cricket symphonies. Picnic feasts. Chlorinated hair.

And then, I grew. From inches higher, the barnyard creek seemed far less adventurous than the latest episode of Little House on the Prairie. There were Teen issues to read, phone calls to make. Mascara became important (I was not yet privy to a waterproof formula).

And with the flip of an unseen calendar, I became an teenage girl.

Years later as a newly single 40-something-year-old, I’d tell of how I grew teary at the sight of the Grand Canyon. I wipe my eyes with the hem of my tee. I know, right? is what I say, and that my tears are of wonder, as you have to see it in person.

Right, he says, ignoring my sweaty head.

Thus returning to the era of living life far away from the observation deck, perfectly excited. Why hike when you can… bike?

Start small.

One of the secret tricks to habit formation is to pair a new habit with an already-established one. Want to finish a touring trip with your buddies one winter day? Martin will tackle it while he's running up the hill pushing me on my mountain bike warm-ups. Ready to try your hand at 5 affirmations? Say ’em in the shower.

Likewise, start small by attaching a short outdoor adventure to a routine you’re sure you won’t skip out on. If you know you’ve got to make a grocery run every week, tack on an extra hour to ride our bike there with a trail bag. Never want to miss a Sunday bike ride? Martin makes a picnic lunch to enjoy afterward.

Keep an adventure bag in the car.

He will always stuff a backpack with water, bug spray (and/or sunscreen), band-aids and a spare change of clothes for emergencies. This way, the next time we drive by a farmer’s market or a new-to-me part of the woods, we’ll have everything he needs for an impromptu adventure.

Pair up.

A bit of research is guaranteed to churn up a handful of activities in the area, so no need to go at it alone here. He checks the local community calendar often for outdoor-friendly events: a free pass at a nearby nature preserve, a short tour of the Capitol, day camps at the zoo. While education is of utmost importance, it’s always nice to have a helping hand to guide us along the way.

I want you to have it all

We have read James & the Giant Peach together, Markus and I, over breakfast oatmeal and on the back deck for lunch. When he was little, Markus would run laps around the kitchen island while we lost ourselves in silkworms and sharks. I was just his age when I read it, and I remember fixating on the part where poor James drops the bag of magic, how everything else would have been different had he not tripped over the stump. How the story hinged on that one mistake, how unfortunate it was, how he’d lived through so many injustices already, and here, one more.

I had failed to see the adventure in everything after, the wonder of life going on anyway. Of our story surprising us, growing our own small plans into a giant peach or otherwise.

I do not fail to see that anymore.

Scrawled in my journal: Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

 

Birthday Suits

We just returned from going out for Monet's birthday tonight at Get Out Games (what?!), so I’ve got celebrations on the brain. We’re big fans of low-key parties around here and so she planned an ordinary hamburger dinner at Hire's full of family and cake and family jokes. And speaking of family, how darling are these masterpieces Kailey created for her art gallery in NYC? I’d love to frame them each in a space – a creative genius with a colorful, stylish spin. So cute!

 

Ordinary Us

This, too, is the week in which I have stumbled upon the perfect dinner party spread: a quartet of galettes and a pile of forks. Adults deem it fancy; children deem it pie. Either way, bellies fill.

Nicole, Brenda, Hillory, Heidi, Laurie

Heidi (and her mom) at her sister Hillory's home

All else: Luring dough on parchment lined pans with a pocketful of tahini sauce. Maldon salt on the crust.

 Three hours of hockey, rosy cheeks, crowd scoring squeals, hands blackened from the puck swing. Sweat in his hair, spitting watermelon seeds into last year’s garden.

 

Oh, Bicycles

I was usually called an outdoor kid. Once, I was gifted a Little Mermaid tent for which to encourage many-an-adventure in the grassy terrain, I opted to pitch it right over my back lawn to cozy up in my floral comforter with a dogeared copy of Anne of Green Gables.

(Bless those parents of mine.)

Even now, in the heart of these beautiful Utah falls, I find myself sometimes making endless excuses in my mind for reasons to stay outdoors. Not too cold for me baby, I say. Don’t mind messing with the jackets, I think. Works with the schedule today, I reason.

All the while knowing full well that a few steps into the fresh air will make me come alive in a way Anne and I both dared to dream of.

—

So I’ve been taking baby steps, re-exploring the fine art of being outdoors. During Markus’s trips around the country, I grab the mountain bike and sneak out to the Bonneville Shoreline trail with a heaping dose of enthusiasm for a ride-along session of Mountain Biking 101. On the breeziest of afternoons, I put my bike into the Bolt for a tune up of the shocks at Wasatch Touring. Today, he spent the afternoon fine tuning the air in them to calibrate for my weight.

It is, every time, worth the jacket layering.

The more we adventure, the more I find myself simply unable to resist nature’s song. Perhaps it’s simply a matter of growing older, of appreciating true beauty in a world of manufacture. Maybe it’s knowing how much Martin loves it, how much it encourages us both, how important it is to choose things we wouldn’t want to miss.

Maybe it’s the bicycles.

—

Yes, it is more work to pack the contents of your bike into a hatch back, to take off the wheel and fit it in, to put the tarp from the depths of the trunk.

Yes, it is more work.
(Yes, it is more reward.)

There is something infinitely magical about mountain biking, whether going around a mountain or switchbacking on the trail. Doesn’t everything look extraordinary when you’re no longer sharing a view ten steps away from work duties? When the bustling crickets, the chattering birds replace the hum of the CT scanner at the end of the clinic?

Slow Blogging

An Unusual Dining Experience

As a food lover (the word ‘foodie’ sounds too precocious to label myself as one), I love the idea of savoring my meal, taking the time to experience the fullness of each flavor. Yet all too often, dining out isn’t necessarily conducive to a slower experience, is it? Each course seems to arrive faster than the last as we’re accepting drinks and bread and cheese plates and tapas and suddenly the table is full and our bellies are fuller – all before the main course has even arrived. It’s an interesting picture of our society today – the need to rush forward and push through until we feel fuller; better – until we’re hungry and empty a few hours later, beginning the cycle anew.

To press ‘pause’ on this cycle, Markus and his SLC-based mother designed a fast food meal where the diner is taken on a journey picking vegetables and cooking steaks to construct our own meal before reaching the dining table. As a result, the act of consuming food is transformed into a ritualistic ceremony.

The resulting celebration dinner is reminiscent of a hockey-player’s work out – an array of exercises designed for the specific purposes of creating and shaping and designing a desired product to be enjoyed. There are cherry pickers and  place holders and ice plugs, primed for shooting, skating and – ultimately – playing.

The team is conceptualizing the tactic at the moment, hoping to introduce the idea to the public in the near future. “We never play a team that winning that team can’t be turned into reality,” Markus noted.

Milan Kundera once wrote, “The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” And much like a steak, those are words worth savoring.

p.s. For a deeper, more meaningful hockey experience of his own, my son Markus just returned from the most challenging and heart pumping tournament in Texas. Bon appetit.
 

Belonging

When Morgen turned 24 and had landed one of his first “real” jobs as an accountant to an audit firm, he ran into a dilemma in the way of studying for his masters degree, a 2-year program by the name of MACC. He was overwhelmed and numb and in need of a listening ear, so yesterday afternoon when Max and Pres and I sat together afterwards eating dinner on our Sunday and talked, exchanging stories about pets and life and hardships. Between sips of water and bites of wontons, I said the only thing I could think of that would appropriately take away a small portion of his pain: “I can't even imagine how he feels.”

It was by far one of the weirder things he's ever done, and I still scratch my head at what could have possibly motivated him to orchestrate a faux life for a blip in his reality. But I know this: I wanted him to feel understood. I wanted him to feel connected. I wanted him to belong.

Of course, exploring the relationship with his own image and expression is only part of his mission. The other? Everyone else. 

Or perhaps it’s something larger – a call to us. I was glad that I’m not alone, and Max and Preslee were with me in these questions. Perhaps he's discovered his own version of balance – the beam that centers harmony and assertion – and he's working to perfect his lean.

Perhaps you agree that these questions might point to a larger issue, one where we begin to manufacture empathy. The kind where we camouflage our stripes and tell tales of invisible under lords.*

*Perhaps also, you are far more normal than I and have never once imagined a behavioral disorder. I’m predicting this to be likely.

Adventurer

Markus was born, and with it, adventure. 

He, like most 16-year-olds, is first and foremost an explorer. A wandering wonderer, a doting daytripper. Last weekend he runs over to show me 4 bruises from his first scrimmage game of the season in Bountiful. “Right here Mom, do you see Mom, just here above the knee of my left leg?”

And so, like mothers have the bias to do, we shift. We flex a bit, first in the ribs to make room for their head, next in our days to make room for their whims. He bikes. He climbs. He catches pucks and snowflakes. He muddies rain boots and chase cars and name clouds.

He even hikes, would you believe it?

I’d love to say that I wouldn’t have it any other way, but in truth, if left to my own devices I’m far more likely to be found on the bench watching him in person. But I do know this: a child’s inherent love for adventure is a gift to encourage, both in words and deed. So while he's at his first NAPHL tournament with his team this weekend, I'm right there cheering for him (on Hockey TV). 

My Word

I am a woman of my word, mostly, except for the one time I was called Becky by a people-loving ward-member and I didn't correct her, hoping she’d be my friend, but it turns out she had a ward list, too, and wanted to set up a playdate and was I available next Saturday? And then everything naturally fell apart, as it does when you don't correct someone who thinks your name is Becky, for 6-and-a-half-months that was never able to break it to her except for when she finally looked me up for a playdate. "Why didn't you tell me your name wasn't Becky, it was Brenda??!!" 

I don’t know, it was a dark time, those early Holladay ward days.

But, I’ve grown up, and now I really and truly am a woman of my word, which is why – this weekend while Markus is away – I got up way too early for a Saturday ICONS Conference at Gardner Village. (Hat tip to Martin for setting up a mountain bike ride following, then patiently walking me through how to operate the mountain bike all by my big self through a rock course in the parking lot. The man is a saint, truly, and if you like this happy biker at all, he’s the one to thank!)

Onward.

Part 2 will come next week! Stay tuned…

An Outdoor Guide

Find your spot.

We creatures of habit have a particularly hard time veering far from our own comfort zone, don’t we? My own secret: carve out something cozy. Snag a place that’s familiar and easy – a nearby pond, a city park – and claim it as yours.

My sister has a specific spot in the park she walks to visit almost daily, and because it’s comfortable and well-trodden and we know precisely what to expect when we make the 45-minute trek, it’s an easy yes.

Adventure needn’t always be adventurous, is what I’m saying.

Try a nighttime walk.

If your days are less available for traipsing around with little destination, all hail the nighttime walk. Grab a few jackets and explore a sleepy world where sunsets are aplenty and brilliant colors emerge. Darkness has a way of slowing us down, of re-calibrating the beat of a fast-paced day. Take advantage of the quiet pace and roam just a few minutes after the sun goes down. (Bonus? Sleepier me = simpler bedtime.)