This past weekend was my family’s Fake Thanksgiving. As I have mentioned before, this was up in Portland and I was there from Friday until Sunday. I was only able to be there for part of Friday since that was a holiday and I didn’t have work. But it worked out so I was there for dinner on Friday through around lunchtime on Sunday.
After taking the train to meet my parents on Friday, we immediately went to my aunt’s house for a casual dinner. Almost everyone who would be at our Thanksgiving was there for Friday except one cousin who was coming the next day. But it was nice to have a casual dinner with everyone and catch up since I hadn’t seen most of the people there since last year. It was crazy to see how tall my cousin’s kids had gotten since the last time I saw them they were all shorter than me. But one is now taller than me and another will probably be taller than me very soon. I tried to do my best with being social, but I wasn’t feeling great that evening. I know a lot of it was due to the anxiety from flying still affecting me. But being around my family was a good distraction from that feeling.
On Saturday, I had a very chill morning. And it was very clear that my parents’ dog had missed me because he spent his morning leaning against the couch to sit with me (he can’t sit on the furniture, but he can butt up to it and lean).
Then a bit later in the morning, we had our family Orangetheory workout. This was the 9th year we had a Thanksgiving workout (although in 2020 we all did workouts in our homes) and it was only my dad and me this time. Some of my family have been dealing with medical things that prevented them from working out. And since nobody else does Orangetheory regularly, doing just one workout when they have been having medical issues isn’t the smartest choice. But at least my dad and I were able to keep up the tradition!
I went a bit easy in the workout since it was my 5th workout in the week. But we still both had a great time and I love that this tradition helps to make me feel a bit more productive on a day that I know can feel a bit sluggish with all the food.
I’m sure at some point, I will have to make the collage multiple images, but at least for now, we can still put all 9 photos in one to celebrate this tradition.
After the workout, we had a bit of time before we had to head over to my cousin’s house for dinner. I didn’t get a ton of photos during dinner, but that just means that I was focused on enjoying the time with my family. But it was a fun night. I had never seen my cousin’s house before and it was really cool! Their basement has a small basketball court in it and they have added different mats and springy floors so you can bounce around and do gymnastics and stuff like that on there. We all had a lot of fun hanging out in the basement and goofing off.
And when we were all upstairs in the main living area, it was awesome to see different things that were my grandparents’ in my cousin’s house. The dining room table my grandparents had is now my cousin’s. And there were also little things like vases or decor that I recognized. I think pretty much all of us have random things from my grandparents and it’s cool to see how each of us has incorporated them into our homes.
And of course, we had to do a family photo. But with so many of us (including my niece and nephew who are still little), it’s not easy to get one photo where everyone looks good. I got the photos we took and used the photo stickers you can do through iPhone and was able to do that to photoshop people into the photo and make sure we got one where we all looked ok. And the photo above the fireplace was originally of my cousin’s immediate family, and I changed that to be a photo of my grandparents. I think the end result looks pretty good considering I don’t have real Photoshop.
My last day with my family was on Sunday, and I had to be dropped off at the light rail around 1pm in order to get to the airport on time. That morning, I went with my parents to take the dog for a walk and explore the neighborhood we stayed in. And then my friend Dani, who lives in Portland, came over to the rental house to hang out for a bit. Even though we had just seen each other recently when she had to stay at my place, it was nice to have a hangout that was much more chill.
And that’s pretty much it for my Fake Thanksgiving weekend. I got to spend a good amount of time with my family and have a lot of the traditions that our family has had for a while. I think we are going to continue doing Fake Thanksgiving since it is a lot cheaper to travel when it’s not the holiday. And it doesn’t really matter if we celebrate a few weeks early as long as we still get to have our traditions.
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