Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Thanks!!

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving is definitely the worst! I hate Thanksgiving. Always have. Turkey and football are two of my least favorite things - right down there with pickles and NASCAR. I don't have any solid memories of Thanksgiving as a kid just one big, swirling mass of being bored while the grown-ups talked incessantly, pushing food around on my plate because I hated all of it and doing a whole lot of cleaning up after dinner. If having fun or giving thanks actually happened at any time during the Thanksgivings of my youth, it has been completely wiped from my hard drive.

During my college years I stopped going home for Thanksgiving. I was always the one volunteering to work over the holiday. My NFBF and I had a tradition for a few years of going out for Chinese on Thanksgiving followed by multiple games of backgammon - these memories are solid and definitely pleasant. Then he got married and had kids and had to do the traditional Thanksgiving thing with the parents again, which left me wide open to befalling the same fate when I got married. Pat's parents are cool and all, but nothing changes how much I dislike a whole day dedicated to turkey and football.

This year, though, things were different. Pat's burning desire to smoke meat on his smoker saved my day!! Because of the smoker we got to have Thanksgiving at our house this year. Spending the day with 11 little paws underfoot can always keep the turkey and football depression at bay! The other perk was that we got to invite two of my pet boys to join us. I didn't even mind all the cooking, I felt rather June Cleaver-ish. Of course, June Cleaver wouldn't have forgotten to serve the salad, nor would she have let the guests leave before breaking out the pie...but still. This year Thanksgiving was actually fun!

Pat and his dad carving the meat:Pat and I with his mom and Uncle Mike:

We put a puzzle together in one night, though there were 2 missing pieces...there are ALWAYS missing pieces. We walked the dogs. Laura came over after dinner and played with us for a bit. Craig spent the night. It was almost like a party. And hopefully it'll start a new tradition of me not hating Thanksgiving.

How every Thanksgiving table should be set...half the table for food and guests, half the table for puzzle pieces.

1 comment:

Craig Brandenburg said...

Funny how we started out with nineteen extra pieces for the puzzle and ended up a couple short.