just a little more thanks giving before we switch holidays

I know no one wants to even think about Thanksgiving any longer.

Even the most reluctant of us recognize the official Changing of the Holidays the weekend after Thanksgiving.

So it’s all Christmas Christmas Christmas now.

And I’m all in for Christmas.  I really am.  Yesterday we chopped down our tree from the great outdoors and propped it back up inside our house – a strange tradition that I love but have to wonder how it would appear to someone unfamiliar with the custom.

I’ll jump right on that polar express to trees and ornaments and stockings and traditions and the red and the green.

Tomorrow.

Today I just want to pause and say . . . Thanksgiving at a cabin in Tennessee was fabulous.  I just don’t want to overlook reflecting on Thanksgiving at the cusp of December.

The food was phenomenal.  Most certainly I was the best fed I had ever been on a Thanksgiving day.  It was overload of the best variety.  My brother’s turkeys (two of them!) were truly the most flavorful I have consumed.  I think it was grilled and smothered in salt and stuffed with goodness and I can’t even describe it well enough to do it justice.  Let us just say this – no one complained about eating turkey for the next two days.  Much of the leftovers were, in fact, consumed in literal handfuls straight from the Zip-loc baggie to our hands to our mouths and passed in a circle as we sat around a night time outside fire.  What?  That’s not how your family eats leftovers?  Trust me, you’re the ones missing out.

The sweet potato casserole.  The stuffing.  The green bean casserole.  The rolls.  And the desserts.  My word.  I want to live in the desserts from our holiday.  (I recognize that is both impossible and weird.  My brother and my nephew wanted to live in a turkey suit and eat themselves so I think mine’s a little less weird, comparatively speaking.)  The cheesecake. You guys.  I’ve had good cheesecake.  I have.  This.  Was.  Better.  And the chocolate truffles (referred to as “truckies”).  And – the best for last – homemade peppermint patties. I guarantee, if you know me in real life, you will soon tire of me talking on and on about these peppermint patties.  I’m asking your forgiveness now.  I just cannot help myself.

We played a lot of games.  Monopoly to the death.  With my dad coaching and my brother and my nephews.  (Boys trained by a man trained by my dad.)  It was brutal.  London was the youngest player by nearly a decade – she held her own and made it to the final three.  (We’re talking six hours here guys.  No one was messing around.)  Air hockey – Bergen played wildly with bloodied fingers from his intensity.  That table top soccer game that makes me feel super inadequate.  Give me air hockey and Monopoly any day.

There was a fire pit and antique stores and a post-Thanksgiving day hike through the Cherokee National Forest.  Kevin says I can’t claim an event as a tradition unless it has already happened two years in a row (a theory with which I disagree) but since this is the second year we have hiked on the infamous Black Friday, I’m officially claiming it a family tradition.

The drive back home across the mountain ended with an in-the-dark mountain side stop to attempt to contain the throw up of one little car sick seven year old.  Listen, if you find a turquoise jacket half buried in the woods, please accept our apologies and leave it where you found it.

My favorite part of the entire celebration was just the laughing and the talking and the lounging and the story telling with a portion of people who have been in my life since I ever even started life.  That’s good stuff, you know?

And now – you guys can go ahead and start celebrating Christmas!

I’m ready!