Thanksgiving 2009

My family does holidays big, did you know? I mean, we just aren't the kind of folks who let a holiday pass without a big meal, various games, dessert and at least one group family photo. This Thanksgiving is no exception...actually, it is an exception but only in that we are celebrating excessively. Three different Thanksgiving extravaganzas, to be exact.


It all started on Saturday, when my precious and over-achieving mother signed us all up to participate in a Thanksgiving lunch at our church. I greeted this experience with approximately the same amount of initial enthusiasm that I greet most church functions: minimal at best. I have been nurturing a bad attitude for months now about all things church-related and this occasion was no exception. But I would like to say now that I was wrong. By the time we were finished, I had warm and fond feelings for my church family and felt genuinely connected with them. Maybe an open heart and a little quality time was just what I needed.


Sunday found us anticipating snow and cooking a turkey for the Willard family Thanksgiving. Since some of us are traveling to California for Christmas and others are staying in Utardia, we (read: my mother. Of course.) thought it would be nice to have Thanksgiving dinner together on Sunday so that the boys and their girlfriends/fiancees could have Thanksgiving dinner. I have my doubts about whether or not they really cared, my mother will never permit anyone to feel left out for the holidays, whether they like it or not. We pretended that it was Thanksgiving and went all out. The carnivores ate turkey and I (and some other people who were blurry in my rush to get to the platter) ate millions of delicious Skallops. I mean, ate so many millions of Skallops that I immediately felt like I was going to need assistance getting up from the table. Only once a year to I subscribe to such gluttony, but at Thanksgiving....I do it with gusto.

As we all sat around the table, being thankful for each other and for Worthington foods, the maker of Skallops, the snow started to fall. We watched it roll in across the valley like a veil, and it was lovely. It snowed and snowed and snowed...almost as if we had ordered it up specially just for that moment. We spent the evening relaxing and chatting away, and I couldn't have asked for a happier evening. When it was time to go home, we scraped four inches of heavy white snow from our car and drove home through the cold, slippery roads.

We came home to find our bad dogs, soaked completely to the bone from playing outside in the snow. We joined them in the backyard, where Gordon started building a snowman that quickly grew to be ridiculously enormous. Who says only kids play in the snow?