As is often the case these days, I seem to be a little behind on my blogging. The "retired life" pace can be quite hectic at times! Christmas is now just fifteen days away and I'm finally getting the Thanksgiving blog written and posted!
Our original plans were to spend Thanksgiving in Florida with Ben flying down to be with us, however, our plans changed. He was unsure of what his days off would be, we had plenty of Southwest Rapid Rewards points and found some inexpensive flights that avoided the heavy travel days. So, we decided to fly up to him and spend Thanksgiving in western Pennsylvania.
We arrived in Pittsburgh on the Friday evening prior to Thanksgiving week. Winter had arrived a few days earlier, it was cold and there was a nice covering of snow on the ground at his house.
Although Thanksgiving was still a few days away, several of the small towns were wasting no time getting into the Christmas season. We enjoyed spending a bit of Saturday afternoon in both Franklin and Slippery Rock. There was a very nice Christmas tree display in Franklin's Barrow Civic Theater, and the downtown was buzzing as they were getting ready for the evenings parade and tree lighting ceremony. The wind chill had the temperature in the teens, so we decided not to stick around and headed back to Slippery Rock, which was also in a festive mood. Several blocks of Slippery Rock's Main Street had been blocked off and the streets were filled with merchants, organizations and churches selling crafts and offering treats and hot drinks. One of the local banks had a Christmas cookie decorating booth that was quite interesting. They had worked really hard and had a wonderful booth and were so kind to everyone. Unfortunately, it was so cold all the icing for the cookies had frozen into giant clumps that resembled playdough that had been left out of the container for several weeks. Thankfully the temperature warmed up nicely after the cold start and we enjoyed nice, seasonably chilly temperatures the rest of our visit.
Had Ben not moved to Slippery Rock it's quite likely that we would have never discovered everything there is to do around Pittsburgh. We always enjoy visiting and they really do it up for Christmas. We enjoyed visiting the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens near the University of Pittsburg campus, which was fully decorated for the Christmas season with their annual Holiday Lights display.
In keeping with the spirit of the season, we visited one of Shadrack's Christmas Wonderland drive through holiday light displays. Never heard of Shadrack's? Well, neither had I! They actually have eight different locations including one in Tampa (I guess I need to get out more). This particular location is in Butler, which is just a short twenty-minute drive from Ben's house. It was fun driving through the choregraphed light display. We were now fully in the Christmas spirit, although we hadn't even celebrated Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving morning started with blueberry muffins (a Tucker Thanksgiving morning tradition) and a few other treats. Unlike many previous Thanksgivings, this one required no cooking preparations for the big feast. We were honored to be invited to join the Quigley Family (Ben's employers for the past three years) to enjoy our Thanksgiving meal with them.......and what a meal it was! It was prepared and served at a local Amish families house. It included all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, corn, salad, fresh baked bread, date pudding, apple and pumpkin pie. It was all amazing!
On Friday while others scrambled for Black Friday deals, we went back to Pittsburgh. This time to the downtown area, which was recently recognized on the Today Show as one of the best cities to visit at Christmas. We enjoyed seeing "A Very Electric Christmas" at one of the downtown theaters as well as strolling through the Christmas Market in Market Square and watching skaters as they made their way around the cities official downtown Christmas Tree.
It was a great ten days of celebrating the start of the holiday season in Pennsylvania with Ben and Allie. Our family is spread out across the country so we can't always be together physically but we are together in spirit and have so many great memories of past Thanksgivings together, including smoking turkey and ham all night, backyard family football games, laughter and a whole lot of love!
When we left Pittsburgh on the Monday morning following Thanksgiving the airport was surprisingly quiet. Two hours later we were back in the Sunshine State and enjoying time with more family. True to our name of "The Traveling Idiots" we weren't there for long. Another journey has started, but that's for another blog. Hopefully I'll get it posted in a little timelier fashion!
