An Otto be Grateful Thanksgiving

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, a day to be grateful. Robert and I have a lot to be grateful for, and we celebrated our way, just the two of us. Our Thanksgiving plans included over-eating, watching movies, and eating more food...all without being affected by Hurricane Otto. To a wonderful surprise, it happened.

This past week was very reminiscent of Fall for me as we had a lot of drizzly rain, steady winds, and a lot of cloudy weather. Egrets could be seen from our balcony cruising the wind. I loved it! Come Tuesday I realized the weather was due to the tropical storm/possible hurricane, Otto. Panama is below the hurricane belt and there has not been a hurricane on record, to my knowledge. It was expected to hit Nicaragua and Costa Rica Thursday. Despite this, I was keeping a watchful eye on it, making sure history was not in the making.

While we were enjoying the cool weather, other parts of Panama got hit pretty hard with flooding and landslides. It was expected that areas near Costa Rica would see heavy flooding and upwards of 12 inches of rain. Areas of Panama City were flooded and there were three deaths in the country. The last news reports I read stated that Panama was the only country that had deaths and that hit made landfall in Nicaragua as a category 2 hurricane.

The most interesting thing about this experience, for me at least, is that it seemed like the news in North America had not mentioned anything about Otto. Robert and I both called our parents Tuesday in order to reassure them we were okay in the event they heard about it. Neither of them had and we were bringing the news to them. The after thought was that if they heard about it, our emails and phones would have been exploding.

Thanksgiving came and we had calm weather. It was the first day the weather was not windy, rainy, or cloudy. We were making phone calls/Skype calls to our parents and siblings while food was in the oven. Robert made turkey for himself and a great tasting pumpkin pie to share. I had a black bean lentil loaf that purposed as my main dish.

Black Bean Lentil Loaf

Cranberry Stuffing

Robert's awesome pumpkin pie!

Late lunch was awesome and the dogs seemed to agree. Both kept trying to dig in the garbage for drippings.

Turkey coma!

Our little dog was not fond of being told no and started a growling match with Robert.

It was hard not to laugh

Movies we watched included Die Hard (it is a holiday movie, right?) and It's a Wonderful Life. The power went out during the second half of It's a Wonderful Life. We decided to walk down the stairs and walk the beach. The sunset was inspiring offering an array of pinks, oranges, and blues. We tried to wait out the power outage, but it was starting to get dark and we thought it would be best to climb the stairs while we still could. Have you ever climbed 11 flights of stairs on a full stomach? It is not something I recommend. The power eventually came back on and we were able to finish the movie.

Christmas is coming up in a month and today marks the official kickoff of that. Did you go shopping on Black Friday? Thanksgiving was a nice, relaxing day. We could not have asked for anything more.

As a side note, since I have been asked, Panama does not celebrate Thanksgiving. However, Canada does in October.