Memorable Thanksgivings

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful for all we have.  And in my opinion, it was the kickoff to the holiday seasons.

As far as Thanksgiving goes, ours was pretty low key.  I made jamabalaya Wednesday and let it soak up all the extra flavor over night.  Andrew barbequed our turkey on the grill, and it turned out to be excellent and easy.  We might be doing that more often for the holidays.  I made homemade mac and cheese, but it was fancy with three cheeses and baked.  I also made homemade apple pie Thursday morning.  We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the morning and took the boys bike riding in the afternoon.  Nothing too spectacular happened which is exactly the way I like it.

Andrew and I have also decided the holiday season was way more fun when we were kids.  We didn't have to worry about stuff like cooking, cleaning, traditions, taking care of children, and generally the huge stresses that holidays bring.

We started talking about memorable Thanksgivings we had as kids.  I'll share two of my more memorable Thanksgivings.

The first was when I woke up Thanksgiving morning to a white Thanksgiving.  We lived in Maryland, and it snowed 4-6 inches the night before and the entire area was completely covered in snow.  It was my own Winter Wonderland.  I remember looking out the window of my bedroom on the second floor to see the completely undisturbed snow and remembering how beautiful it looked.  I can to this day bring up that picture in my mind at any time.  I must have taken a mental picture that day and remember every single detail to how big the trees were in the front yard to how the branches were covered in snow, and seeing the blanket of snow over our cul de sac and all the driveways.  Gorgeous and peaceful are the best words to describe it.

My second most memborable is when we had my Aunt, Uncle, Cousin, and Granny up from Florida for Thanksgiving.  My brother and cousin had the wonderful idea of putting on a Thanksgiving play.  Unfortunately, it was immortalized on video and we have yet to be able to live it down.  Especially, my brother who stole one of my five lines in the play.  Then my Granny fell asleep in the house while we were all outside riding bikes and the turkey was cooking.  I think it was the fire alarm that had at least my mom or dad running in the house to find out the oven was smoking and had almost caught on fire.  Granny didn't notice and the alarm didn't wake her up, so we almost burned down the house that Thanksgiving.  Then there was the Thanksgiving song my Uncle decided to sing at the dinner table.  "Happy Thanksgiving to Us!" is now officially immortalized on video as well including my cousin almost hitting him with a turkey leg for continuing to sing it and make my brother laugh.  Ah! Family!  Gotta love 'em!  And that's just a small branch on my huge tree of extended family!

Those will always be two Thanksgivings I will remember.  I'm hoping my boys will have a couple of memorable Thanksgivings like I did.  And hopefully none of them will entail almost burning the house down.