For the first time, our family has spent Thanksgiving apart. John and Zack went to Madrid with his soccer team and their families and Sam, Milo and I held the fort here in Palo Alto.

Since Sam still can’t go outside during daylight hours, we made it as fun as we could indoors. Since Sam loves spicy food (and so do I :),  I bought a fun cookbook called “F*ck That’s Hot!” And we tried some of the recipes. We started with dumplings in honor of our family friend Chun Hua, who makes all of it from scratch. We opted to buy the wrappers and gained a deeper appreciation for her artistry. 

Next it was on to Thai food. For this, we splurged and engaged a local home chef to help us. She was awesome and together we made 4 dishes: thom ka gai, Thai basil pork, salmon with crispy skin and bok choi, and Thai pineapple fried rice. Yum-tastic!

Then for Thanksgiving, Sam made us a paella! I found a pan at a local Spanish restaurant/store. Sam isn’t keen on seafood so we stuck with spicy chicken sausage. It was tasty!

And we finished binge watching Narcos — something we started at some point during his treatment (we’d watch it in the hospital together).  All of the Mexican series as well as the Columbian series — it was really good (and I don’t like violence as a general rule for my TV but they did a really great job with these 2 series). 

As for the Spanish adventurers — Zack’s team played well in the 3 full games and 3 “round robin” 20 min games/tournament that they played. All of this trip was put together by parents from our team and our coach — not an “official tournament” or an “official trip” for our soccer club. Our family hasn’t travelled with friends before, so this was a new adventure all around and Zack got to travel with 12 of his best buddies (plus their families!).  He had a blast!  I think they ended the week with 2 wins, 3 losses and 1 tie.  And all games were close — no blow outs.  

And I got a Zack lead FaceTime tour of Museo National Reina Sophia — his idea!  (they’d skipped the Prado tour but Zack surprised John by loving the Museo Reina Sophia and they got to see Guernica too).  

Many thanks to all who made the trip to Spain happen and gave Zack and his teammates some awesome memories!

Happy thanksgiving to Team Sam! We are grateful for all of you.

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