Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving!  What a totally American holiday! It's the only holiday that you are encouraged to wear pants with elastic waists, over eat all of the richest of foods and HAVE Dessert (You would never dream of eating that many calories the rest of the year), watch TV all day with family and take a nap!  It is also the only holiday where we are Thankful for everything we have on Thursday and are trampling each other and spraying each other with pepper spray on Friday for things we want.  (Trampling and pepper spray were the headlines for Black Friday shopping on the news today.)

Alot of my facebook friends have been listing things they are thankful for each day.  Doesn't it just bring life in perspective when you realize all the good you have in your life.  Something I am extremely thankful for is getting to have Thanksgiving dinner with my 93 yr old grandmother this year at her house.  After a health scare earlier this year where she had to have an irregular heart stopped and restarted, it is really a blessing to spend time with her.  When I walked in the door she was standing over the kitchen counter overseeing the food preparation.  Alot of dishes she had prepared herself and she would not have had it any other way.  She does not take her Matriarch role lightly when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner. 

Alot of family and friends are starting their own holiday traditions this year.  They are taking up the torch, so to speak, and creating new traditions for their growing families.  They are finding themselves in a transition period where they will be the ones to be the keeper of the turkey! (Or enchilada in some cases)   This year has been the year that I have noticed my Grandmother seems to be her age, there is a new frailness to her stance.  A slowness is her getting up and a hand searching for something to hold on to as she moves from place to place.  I am thankful for the time I am getting with her and all the love she has given to me throughout my life.

I am so thankful for my family. 

Hallows Eve

It's the day after Halloween....the day in which teachers are thankful that we send our kids to school crashing from their sugar high.  The day in which you try to figure out creative ways to incorporate all your left over Halloween candy in to Thanksgiving recipes. (Won't this candy corn look adorable as decoration on top of my dressing?)  The day my Jack Russell Terrorists spends hiding Tootsie Roll pops in my shoes, laundry baskets and bras.  (He is great at hiding eggs at Easter too!)    It's the day you realize that you only have 53 days left to get your Christmas shopping done.  (Say it ain't so!)

We had a small get together Friday night with friends and family.  Costumes were required!  Everybody brought a ghoulish dish.  Lots of good eats to be had.  (Can you really call a party a party without spinach dip and sausage balls?  I think not)  We also set up a fog machine with strobe lights outside our front door so all of guests could cough & choke while having seizures as they rung the doorbell.  We filled the bathtub with water and glow sticks and put radio active signs all around the bathroom as the tub glowed with a greenish hue.

We played scary movie charades, I know it was wrong to include the movie title "The Human Centipede" in the mix on the grounds that it is soooo wrong, but it made for a great acting out in charades.  (You know you have been married a long time when your spouse gets what you are acting out from one small hand gesture!)  By the way, when Kevin was trying to show us on his arm how many syllables, I yelled out, "Taking your pulse!"  This is not cool in the charade world I found out.

We had a witch, a zombie WalMart associate, Troy from Swamp People, Cotex, a Convict, my sister-in-law came dressed as a WalMart shopper (dressed in her pajamas of course like all WalMart shoppers).  I was Minnie Mouse, I really felt the need to rap every time I put on my big hands. (Those hands were made for over exaggerated hand gestures!  Yeah, BOY!)   Kevin was an Avatar, but he lacked the commitment his costume required!  His full body blue suit ended up half off by the end of the night with his mask disregarded for eating!

Hope you had a great Halloween, now get to Christmas shopping!