Thanksgiving 2010

Thanksgiving is becoming my favorite holiday. I think it’s because I have so much to be thankful for and because it has less hype than Christmas. Not that I don’t enjoy Christmas, I do, but it just seems like it’s easier to do Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving has been fun.

PREPARATIONS. Getting ready for Thanksgiving was sort of strange this year. For the last seven years the meal has been a joint effort by Vicki and Pauline, and I think that’s been the one thing that has made the holiday a little hard this year. Jenna, however, has jumped right in. She and Vicki made an excellent team and served up a wonderful meal. They used several of Pauline’s recipes and I think she would be proud of them.

FESTIVITIES. The day was warm and overcast so the boys played outside with the neighbors most of the morning. (Twelve hours later the temperature had dropped 30°.) I went to get Mom and Aunt Mar at 2:00. We sat down to the biggest spread of ham, deviled eggs, corn, rolls, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, squash dressing, carrots, stuffed mushrooms, and green beans. We also enjoyed carrot cake and caramel pie for dessert.

After we engorged ourselves we retired to the living room where I had set up a laptop, a projector, and a screen. Over the last month or so I made a big push to scan all of Mom’s slides. I’m pretty sure some of these slides haven’t seen the light of day in 50 years. We rolled through almost 700 pictures from 1953 to 1959. I know Mom and Aunt Mar had a good time looking at their past. (We looked at almost 300 more pictures tonight.)

CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS. It is not our practice to decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving. However, while others begin their Christmas shopping on Black Friday we use the day to deck our halls and trim our tree. I am glad to say we have everything decorated and all the boxes put away by the end of the weekend. The only major decoration we haven’t put up is our outdoor nativity scene which is in desperate need of a paint job. Hopefully this will be spruced up and back on display next year.

MRS. MANNERS WANNABE. While getting ready to put up the Christmas tree I was moving a table when a large book fell off and hit my foot. Picking the book up I noticed it was Emily Post’s Etiquette. When I asked Vicki about it she said, “It was Mom’s. I decided to keep it to see how in-etiquette I am.”

I GET BY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS. After the last newsletter went out Vicki mentioned something that happened when she ate with Nate at school last week. Whenever a student has a guest for lunch they can pick one classmate to eat with them. Vicki said there was a cute little girl named Rebecca in Nate’s class vying for attention. At first she hung around and sweetly asked who Nate would invite to lunch. Nate didn’t want to be rude, but was trying to pick someone else while still being a gentleman to Rebecca. As the class was leaving Nate still hadn’t picked anyone so she grabbed his hand. Nate found a discreet way to slip his hand out of hers. Nate wound up not picking anyone in trying not to hurt her feelings.

Vicki also ate with Nate when she worked Book Fair several weeks ago. At that time Vicki got on to Nate for not eating his fruit, and then turned to the little boy and said, “Nate sure has a hard time remembering to eat his fruit. Would you remind him to do that?” The boy readily agreed that he could help Vicki out.

When Vicki got to school last week for the Thanksgiving meal that same little boy came up and said, “Nate’s doing better about eating his fruit.” Then another boy in the class chimed in, “Yeah, he is.” Vicki is glad Nate has buddies who have his back.

BUSY WEEKEND. Last weekend was pretty busy for us. Nate was invited to a birthday party for one of his classmates, Hayden, Friday night. Jenna also invited one of her friends, Savannah, to spend the night. After taking Nate to his party we drove on up to Franklin to eat and go shopping. Savannah is a nut. She kept us laughing all the way to Franklin and back.

The next day Savannah was reunited with her family at church and Ben got to bring home on of his friends, Jake, for the afternoon. That evening we went to the Christian Gospel Temple (the big church next to the interstate) for our community Thanksgiving service. We enjoyed music from all the churches attending and Bro. Bill spoke. There was a dessert social afterwards.

HOT MIC. Saturday morning Vicki cut my hair. Some hair trimmings got in my ear and since Vicki was unsuccessful trying to wipe them out she decided to lean over and blow them out. This was so unexpected and deafening that I practically jumped out of my chair. All I could say was, “Vicki, that microphone works very well.” This whole thing got us so tickled that Vicki almost couldn’t finish my haircut.

Joe