Non-Traditional Thanksgiving Meal & Trip to the Store on Thanksgiving Eve..

As most of you probably know, I am divorced. Luckily, my boys' dad lives in the same town as me so we "share" the boys. Last year I had them Thanksgiving Day therefore, it is their dad's year to have them. Joe and I are a small family so we didn't plan to cook this year...we actually thought of going to Golden Corral and not have to worry about cooking, cleaning, etc. Anyway, we decided not to cook because the boys are going to their dad's in the afternoon to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his friends. So, I thought, "how could I have a special meal with them but not ruin their dinner with his friends?" For days and days Nathan has been asking me to fix a meal from a cook book he made in Kindergarten. He wants me to cook "Sunny Side Up Sandwiches". This is just an English muffin with egg, cheese, and Canadian bacon. Just a few days ago he asked me about it again. Then it dawned on me!! Why not cook them a "special" breakfast (more like brunch) so I don't ruin their early dinner. So, I promised Nate we would make those sandwiches as our non-traditional Thanksgiving meal.

As I looked through the recipe I realized I didn't have all the items we needed. So, we made the dreaded trip to the grocery store on Thanksgiving Eve just before dinner tonight. What was I thinking??? I should have known that it would be packed! Where was my common sense? The store was so packed that they didn't even have an empty cart or basket!! Here I am going back and forth trying to find the items I needed for these sandwiches because this was a store I don't normally go to so I wasn't sure where everything was (unlike the Commissary or Super Wal-Mart!!!). I am carrying a gallon of milk, carton of eggs, bag of English muffins and a package of Canadian bacon trying my best not to drop the eggs all over the place. I had to weave in and out of the crowds all the while trying to keep up with a six year old who can't understand the concept of "stay with me". The milk was cold and I had to keep switching hands because my thumb felt like it was going to fall off from the cold and pressure of holding the handle with only a few fingers. On top of that, my dang phone started to ring!! Normally, I would have just ignored it until I was able to get to it. But, I had called Joe several times on the way to the store trying to find out if I need to take anything to the friends' house that we had been invited too, at the last minute, for Thanksgiving lunch/dinner. Therefore, I had to find a place on the shelf to sit down the milk so I could dig in my purse to find my phone. Of course it wasn't in the pouch that is conveniently the size of a phone. NO, it was way down in the bottom under all the receipts I need to throw away, keys, wallet, hair bows, etc. Finally I find the phone and I am trying to hold the phone with my shoulder and ear while holding all the items I had in a line long enough to stretch halfway down one of the aisles. I gave Nate the bag of muffins to hold for me. Bad idea. He holds it under the plastic clip and starts to swing it around and of course the plastic clip falls off and he almost slings muffins on the floor. I had to hold the bag and twist with the same hand so he could try and put the plastic clip back on. Sometimes I wonder if four hands is really better than two!! LOL. Finally, we get to the self checkout and get our things paid for and out the door. Remind me to NEVER EVER again go to the grocery store the day before Thanksgiving!

Back to the non-traditional meal. So, we have all the fixin's (plus some hash rounds like you get from Burger King) to make Nathan's recipe from his Kindergarten cookbook. He is extremely excited about it. I have this bad feeling that he isn't really going to eat much of it or even like the Canadian bacon. I warned him it was like ham instead of bacon and he says he likes it...we shall see. I think he is just excited that we are making something he had a hand in creating at school. In any case, having the moments with him shopping for the ingredients and cooking it in the morning will be worth the dreaded trip to the store tonight. The things we do for the happiness of our kids. :-)