Macy's Thanksgiving Parade

Happy Late Thanksgiving everyone! We were sad not to get to spend Thanksgiving with our families (for the first time ever), but we ended up having a great day.

The day started out early, too early, 4:30 a.m. to be exact! We woke up, dressed in many layers of clothes, grabbed a thermos of coffee or hot chocolate and headed to the train station to catch the 5:48 a.m. train to Manhattan. After decades of watching the parade on TV, we finally got the chance to see the famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - LIVE! One of my co-workers, Kathleen and her 2 little girls had stayed overnight in the City, so Kathleen was out on Broadway before 5 a.m. to be sure we had good seats - we were right in front of the barricades on the corner of 56th and Broadway!

It was so much fun to see the parade in person - and to have such great spots! I have a lot of favorite photos, but I'll try to pick a few to post here - I didn't even use the "zoom" on most of these:

We caught a crowded train home around noon, picked up a bottle of wine and our pumpkin bread and headed over to our friends, Stephanie and Doug's house in Fairfield for a delicious Thanksgiving dinner. Since we couldn't be with our families, it was so nice to spend the holiday with friends and have a wonderful meal - we had a really great time. Holly and Neil made an amazing meal for everyone - squash soup to start, turkey and gravy, carrots, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing and pumpkin and apple pie, pumpkin bread and creme brulee for dessert. Needless to say, no one went home hungry! Here's the group before we ate our meal (starting from the head of the table - Stephanie, Carole, Wissam, Dorothee, Isabelle, Doug, Holly, Neil and Tommy);

After a long, but wonderful day, we headed home in time to watch the Longhorns crush the Aggies (ok, I'll admit that we watched the second half from bed, but I watched my Longhorns until the very end!). Happy Thanksgiving everyone!