I was held captive last Thanksgiving in Manila. While I spent it with very nice people over great food, it just wasn’t…right. It was screwy spending an entirely American holiday in a third world country with absolutely no loved ones around. OK, if you hate your family and happiness, this might be your thing. It wasn’t mine.

So, you would expect then that Michael and I would spend this Thanksgiving in a traditional turkey fashion. That didn’t quite turn out to be the case. At the moment Michael is sitting on the Condo kitchen floor while Iona is dancing and jumping up and down while simultaneously whining and howling. They are both staring at the microwave. We haven’t had microwave popcorn in ages and apparently they both missed it. Don’t get me wrong, they DID BOTH EAT TODAY.

We started the day by driving to Statesville to look at kitchen cabinets. We fortunately loved them, so the five hour round trip was worth it. They are nothing like we had originally been considering, but they are sooooooooo reasonable AND they will look pretty spectacular. I guess when you have a completely blank slate as a kitchen, you can afford to change your mind a bit.

After getting back to Raleigh we hung out with the corgi for a bit and then headed over to Peter and Barbara’s house. Peter is one of the reasons we moved here. I had been stalking his website for about five years, absolutely drooling over all the stunning historic houses in this area. As we are all keenly aware, we bought the historic house that needed ALL the work…not one that anyone else had lovingly or painstakingly restored. Oh no, that would have taken all the fun out of moving here. It wasn’t Peter’s fault though, as he did show us about 35 other options before this one.

Dinner was absolutely wonderful and we got a chance to meet another couple as well. That is what Peter excels at…getting new people together and talking about ten topics that seemingly don’t go together, yet segue beautifully.

Here’s a glimpse of our Thanksgiving Day cabinets. Now we just have to figure out when to rent a trailer and head on back to Statesville to pick them all up. Sounds like a delightful Sunday drive.