Turkey Day with Family

As I read the blogs of my Characters, I noticed that almost everyone gave a re-cap of their Thanksgiving Day with the family. I thought I might jump on the bandwagon and do the same. There were 8 of us at my parents house: Mom and Dad, me and Steven, my sister and her hubby, and my niece and nephew. I was real excited to see the kids (13 and 17, respectively) cuz I hadn't seen them since my wedding two months ago.

We all ate too much, as usual.

"I'm trippin' off that tryptophan," says my B-I-L.

"That was chicken. Not turkey," says my niece.

This was his second Thanksgiving with us and he never knew we'd been eating chicken, not turkey. Go figure. Of course, he didn't know that whoever got the meatiest part of a wish bone won, either. Yeah, I know. I thought everyone knew that.

"Wow, your childhood was real..." my Dad trails off, trying to search for the right word.

"Depraved," my B-I-L fills in.

"No. Your just knowledge challenged," my Mom says from the kitchen.

LOL. I like that better. I'm gonna have to use that in one of my books sometime.

For the record, we do chicken. Not turkey. Cornish hens, to be exact. From what I can remember, we've only done turkey once. Personally, I think chicken's better. My Mom makes great chicken. We had the staples: stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, rolls, green beans, corn on the cob, salad, and deviled eggs. My niece and a LOVE deviled eggs. We usually have to fight over the last one, though it's never come to blows, but this time was different. There were leftovers. My Mom also made two sweet potato pies and a lemon cake with chocolate frosting.

For the record, I don't like sweet potatos. At least, not by themselves. Even if they were smothered in butter and brown sugar. However, I do like sweet potato pie. Go figure.

After we let dessert settle a bit, we all took a walk to the nearby park and I did something I haven't done since I was in elementary school:

SWING.

Can I tell you how much fun this was? When I was swinging on the playground at school, I used to do backflips off these things. We used to have jumping contests to see who could land the farthest. We used to twist the chains around and spin so fast I wanted to spew. I didn't do any of those things this time. I would've given both of my parents a heart attack (not to mention smelly clothes)

"You want me to do an underdog?" Steven asks.

"You know what one is?" I laff back.

He didn't do the underdog. I probably would've clocked him in the head with my clog if he had. Purely by accident, of course. So for about a good five minutes, the "kids" played while my parents watched. Too fun.

In the speech that I'd made at my wedding reception, I'd said that not many children like hanging out with their parents. I'm one of the few--my sister included--that do. And yesterday just reinforced why I'm thankful for them.

Labels: Family Portrait