I woke up, and once again raced for a few more bowls of my favourite breakfast, Cheerios! I also did eat some of a cranberry fruit tart that my sister-in-law had made, which was absolutely delicious.
Also, since I was feeling a little bit badly that everyone in California and Colorado had already uploaded their photos to Facebook, whilst we in Boston had not done any thus far, I uploaded some photos online. That way, no matter how far apart we all were, everyone could see each other's photos and feel connected across all of the miles, no matter how far apart we were on Thanksgiving day.
Then, as the weather was generally good (if a bit brisk), we all went out for a walk around my brother's Portsmouth neighbourhood and the local mill pond. Absolutely beautiful, and incredible to realise that the city and such pretty nature all exists right within walking distance of my brother's house.
We came back and my brother started making black bean chorizo soup, although unfortunately wasn't paying attention when he was chopping the jalapeno pepper, and then answered the phone when a friend called. Not thinking anything of it, he absent-mindedly wiped his eye, which then led to some frantic looking for eye wash and my brother writhing in agony as the pepper burned his eye. Luckily, after enough water and saline, things improved a bit, but it was a lesson to be cautious where you put your hands after handling jalepenos!
We didn't have any time to actually eat the soup however, as my brother had signed me, my father, and himself up for a yoga class at the regular yoga studio he goes to. It turned out to be an interesting class, as unlike being in the gym with bright lights and distracting upbeat music heard faintly in the background, this was a dedicated yoga studio, with natural wood floors, gently playing music and water clocks, everything very zen like I've always heard yoga studios being like.
The class was nice enough, much more focused on breathing than my yoga class. I always enjoy my yoga class at my gym, for in addition to doing the regular flows of sun salutations, every class my yoga instructor just encourages us to do something weird, like balance on our hands or do back-bends, that aren't really part of any "flow" per se, but are just an interesting challenge. This class was really much more entirely focused on "flow", which was nice, if just for an interesting change of pace.
My brother really impressed me with his yoga practice, and I have to say that my father did impressively well also. Admittedly when we got to the balance poses he kept falling over, but I'll give him credit for being a 66-year old guy doing yoga, and admittedly since he'd nearly 7-feet tall, his centre of gravity is much higher than it is for the rest of us, so balance is always going to be harder for him anyway. There's a reason those little gymnasts with such good balance are so short! Balance is not a good game for former basketball players.
Then at the end of the class, I was confused when my brother had told me to put my warm fleece and socks in the locker room, but I understood why at the end of the class, when we were in shivarsana (corpse pose), and the instructor came around and covered us all with warm fuzzy fleece blankets. A really nice touch, I wish we had nice blankets like that in my own class!
When we got back to the house, we got a visit from Montana, the neighbour's cat. I don't understand this cat, as she always comes over to visit my brother's house, even though she doesn't live there and there is no food for her there. Yet they always let her in, pet her, and when she gets tired of hanging around being petted by people, she goes back to her own house. Montana even once jumped in my car and tried to come back to Boston with me when I lived there, she really has no fear of exploring unusual places and is highly social! Anyway, Montana is perhaps one of my Dad's favourite cats in the world, and hence he was delighted to get a visit from Montana. Equally, she just grooved in Dad's lap, and the two of them seemed to enjoy a good petting session.
We then headed down to my aunt and uncle's house for dinner, stopping at the grocery store for pumpkin pie ingredients, cider and heavy cream on the way, as we'd already eaten up all of the pumpkin pie in previous days. Thank goodness we did, as when we arrived we learned that when my aunt had gone to her local grocery store, they had entirely sold out of canned pumpkin! Hence she had bought a store-made pie, but we decided that homemade pumpkin pie was really the way to go and made our own. Yum!
We then went and sat by the fire before dinner, and set up my aunt's Wi-Fit to play with it, but eventually got bored of the set-up process and just started doing group yoga. You know, because I'm sure that's what all families used to do in the olden days, was to sit around the fire and do yoga!
Finally it was dinnertime, which was almost entirely composed of leftovers heated up in the microwave. Once again, it was outstandingly delicious. I absolutely amazed myself, for after the past few days, you would think that I would simply have no more room in my stomach, but the food was so delicious that I found myself almost compulsively eating.
Once we were nearly all in a food coma due to how much we had eaten, we all went into the living room and watched the movie "Spellbound", a documentary about middle-school students competing in a nation-wide spelling bee. Really compelling watching, even though I'd already seen it before. I lay by the fire with my cousin Katie, eating the pumpkin pie we had just baked, topped with fresh whipped cream. Absolute bliss.
Finally headed home at the end of the evening, absolutely full to the brim, definitely ready to sleep!
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