On Family, Friends, Food, and Fun

For the past month or so, I've been posting a Friday Five on my blog, five memorable moments from my week. About the same time, Ruth Ayres, over at Ruth Ayres Writes started a new meme called Celebrations.  I love this idea and am going to switch gears and join the Saturday Celebrations blogging community.  I am a day early, but here I go!

Today, I am celebrating Thanksgiving because it was a beautiful day in my house.  

Like many people, yesterday was defined by family arriving at various times, a movable feast from mid-morning until early afternoon, quiet conversations catching up with cousins, rambunctious storytelling, and finally the big sit...down "meal of the year," complete with all the fixings.

After this delicious "meal of the year" (you should hear an echo reverberating in your head in the style of the old TV game show announcers), we retired to the fireplace room, where a beautiful day turned into a memorable one.  

The Oxford English Dictionary (actually a shortened OED that I hauled back from a second-hand shop in Little Hampton, England) was pulled from the shelf and the game began.  Ever since I can remember, we've played Mad Dictionary, a game where one person chooses a word (that no one else knows) from the dictionary.  Each person writes a definition for the word.  The real definition is written down on a slip of paper as well.  The person who chose the word then reads all the definitions aloud and people vote on either what they think is the real definition or what they think is the most creative definition.  Creativity must be recognized and celebrated!

Words like tabify, skellum, promerops, spinozist, mauverneen, and dyphone are now part of our lexicon. We played for two hours last night and, suffice to say, what started out more seriously with scientific sounding definitions devolved into described scenes of Upper East Side Manhattanites at a Spin class and skellums sneaking out of bathroom windows to avoid paying restaurant tabs. Have a look at some of our fun.

Tabefy:

tabefy - apathy in the Internet age: having so many tabs open on one's browser that the content and its import are lost. 

Dyphone:

dyphone - an App for the iPhone.  Apple's latest invention conveniently kills your battery just when you need it, "Caught in an uncomfortable conversation? No problem.  Launch the Dyphone App and bingo, "I'm sorry it looks like my battery is dying, I need to go charge my phone."

Spinozist:

An Upper East Side mother addicted to spinning and unable to wrest herself away from the "hot" male instructors at Soul Cycle on 83rd Street.

spinozist - master of the playground tire swing. The child who does not need to go to the nurse after spending recess spinning around on the tire swing.

Promerops:

Mauverneen:

****blogger thinks all these words are incorrectly spelled.

From here we moved onto Sporcle. With a laptop hooked up to the TV this becomes a full out free-association, shouting-out-the-answers throw down. Sitting in the typing seat is stressful!  Country quizzes, literary quizzes, music quizzes, you name it. We tried it.

Geoguessr was next. Exploring and identifying locals around the world is a family fun activity. We travelled to Norway, Russia, United States, Australia and Sweden last night.

Today I am celebrating this beautiful and memorable day spent with family and friends.