Franksgiving

So the Ritzman family has long since given up on laying claim to traditional holidays for family gatherings, capitulating to the more established and structured families of their children’s spouses. For the last two years, we have driven down to San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving on Friday, since everyone already had plans with their in-laws for The Day. After two years, we figure we can call it an official tradition, meriting a name and an assumption that it will happen next year. Thus was born Franksgiving.

We left Portland before the crack of dawn (which happens later and later these days, so it's not too surprising that we beat it) and met James' parents in Albany, where we piled into the back of their minivan with James' brother Mark and several large Christmas presents for the grandkids. The drive down was fairly uneventful except for a near death experience involving an SUV and a semi-truck, and we arrived in San Francisco before sunset.

A side note: I refer to all places around the San Francisco Bay Area as "San Francisco" because I honestly have no idea where I am most of the time I am down there.

Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a potato bar at James' sister Emilyann's house, after playing with her three highly energetic children, which made a wonderful dinner for us road-weary travelers.

We stayed at a hotel that night, which was n-i-c-e. Visiting family is all well and good, but sometimes you just need a place (possibly one with an in-room spa) that you can call your own space to feel like you've actually had "a vacation." We still felt this way when the fire alarm woke us all up at 8am and we had to evacuate the building. It's a good thing I wasn't wearing bright orange "doctor operation" pajamas, or the whole situation might have been embarrassing. Ok, maybe I was. At least it was warm enough for a November morning.

Since Franksgiving Feast wasn't to happen until 4pm, and some indiscreet smoker decided that we were waking up at 8am, we decided to go visit the Winchester Mystery House down the road a bit. It's a mansion built by Sara Winchester, the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune, who built this crazy house to appease the spirits of those killed by the rifle of her husband's family. Interesting house, but the most bizarre thing there must have been our tour guide. A rather flamboyant man in his fifties/sixties from Boston, he just thought he was hi-larious. We thought he was hilarious, too, but not because of his obscure jokes. James bought me two pairs of earrings as souvenirs, since I didn't have anything to that point to remind me of our many excursions to San Francisco.

We came by Emilyann's house early in the afternoon and set up the tables with festive paper plates and our fabulous centerpieces (James and I made them). Then we got to play with the kids and in-laws. James helped our nephew NayNay and niece Kallan make foam princess castles and gingerbread houses (*sigh* respectively) from kits that Emilyann got at Michaels. Julie, Mark and I played Settlers of Catan, with Tycho helping Julie roll the dice and acting as banker. We played again the next night with Matt, Julie, James and myself, and we think we like it enough to get it for our collection of rarely-used board games taking up space in our closet.

Then we feasted. All the traditional players were there, including the Ritzman traditional cranberry fluff and about six different kinds of rolls. Also, there was a fabulous dish of baked root vegetables, including BEETS and PARSNIPS! Fabulous. the kids sat at the long table with the adults and all had a good time. We finished our game of Settlers over pumpkin pie and ice cream, cleaned up, and went back to our hotel for another night of "our own space" luxury.