Thanksgiving and Black Friday

The day before Thanksgiving I took the day off to get a speeding ticket - this is why I don't take time off. Becky was in nursery so we played our new addiction, the 'Settlers of Catan' board game.

Thanksgiving is the most 'traditional' of the American holidays. Lots of people will fly or drive home to be with their family and almost everyone has turkey. Our tradition is to have Claire here with us as she has been both years we're been here, we are actually planning to try to fatten her up and eat her one year to save on the turkey.

For the meantime, not being ones to argue with a fine tradition we also had turkey (done on the BBQ of course) adding in the British secret weapon.

You can't beat roast potatoes and they are almost unheard of here which makes them even more of a treat.

Andy also did a fantastic pumpkin pie, which might sound a bit odd until you realise that there is very little pumpkin in it, its actually really good.

Provided you can make it off of the sofa after all that a walk around the park is just what's needed with a chance for the kids to play on the swings.
The day after thanksgiving is Black Friday, the biggest sales day of the year by far. Its called Black Friday as it is typically the day most stores go into the black on their balance sheets. Not so sure about this year! Anyway given that stores open at 5am on the east coast I had to be in the office at 3:30am central time with a bunch of people from my team to be on point and check all our systems were operational. It all went pretty smoothly and I got out of the office in time for us to head into Stillwater in the afternoon.


Despite the fact that we'd had a pretty warm spell for about a week the river was still slightly frozen.

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We are getting the hand of making sure the kids are warm enough now. The rough rule of thumb is 'if they can move properly they don't have enough layers on'.


Claire here is demonstrating the popular 'Eat Yourself Warm' technique.



The next day we braved the Mall of America and the kids survived a 7 hour shopping trip. There is actually plenty for them to do so it really wasn't that bad and everyone here says it is too crowded to shop but compared to a UK high street in December it is comparatively deserted, you rarely have to queue up for anything unless you come on Friday at 5am.I also got to check out one of our new Best Buy Mobile locations which are a little bit like the larger Carphone Warehouse stores (but even nicer I think)