Frickin' Non-Standard Holiday...

I can't really give you a picture of a normal Thanksgiving for me, because I don't have normal Thanksgivings. My Thanksgiving is radically different every year; the only thing that remains the same is the fact that I always end up eating turkey.  Here's an example of what I mean: this Thanksgiving involved sulking in another room with my sister while our all-adult visiting family slowly got drunk.  The Thanksgiving before that was a wild house party with a half-dozen cousins all visiting from Michigan, and we got into crazy shenanigans day after day.  The Thanksgiving before THAT, our big fancy dinner was eaten on our laps while me and that same group of cousins watched junk on Netflix in the basement of our grandparents' house in Howell, MI.  And the Thanksgiving before THAT was just my immediate family having a large, quiet meal, with way too much food piled on the kitchen counter.

As you can see, there is almost nothing standard about this holiday for me.  Basically the only thing that stays the same is the mostly-traditional food: turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc.  Thus, I can't say whether or not I like Thanksgiving, only a specific one.  This Thanksgiving I did not enjoy, because all the relatives were old and boring, and I got kicked out of my room and had to sleep on the floor for three nights.  The two previous Thanksgivings, however, were hectic and awesome and immensely enjoyable.  So every year I wait with nervous anticipation to hear our Thanksgiving plans, hoping they involve cousins.  ALL of the many cousins on my dad's side are really fun, and any holiday spent with them is bound to be a blast.  Some years, though, I end up with duds like this one.  *le sigh...*

Assignment 12

Tganksgiving is the best time of the year for me. It is the ideal time, my immediate family comes in from college and we spend a week relaxing, eating and making fun of eachother. Then when thanksgiving day finally comes, I wake up to a huge breakfast that puts me into a food coma. When I wake up I enjoy some football, and from there I eat the best dinner of the year. I have turkey, the most amazing bread rolls, corn, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and stuffing. Then to top it off I have pumpkin and chocolate pie. We do have a lot of leftovers, but that just means I get to enjoy that meal over and over again the next todays. And usually a couple days after this feast it's my birthday. Then a couple weeks youu have christmas. My best memory was when my birthday was on the same day as thanksgiving. Not only did I have a relaxed day with great food, but I also got presents.

At a Loss

My thanksgivings have been spent at my aunt's over decorated mansion for my entire life. I have 3 aunts. They are all very similar (including my mother) but complain about each other hypocritically all the time.  They are all crazy. Aunt Kim is very crass. She has recently picked up the flipping people off thing and thinks it is very funny. She also flashes us her underwear and pretends to fart. Lovely southern women.

I still sit at the kid's table with my cousins. Which I like very much, except for my second cousin who's mother is a crazy, self centered twitchy blond woman who is forever embittered by her rejection by the Dallas cowboy cheer leading squad. She has huge boob implants and wears tight velour exercise suits and carries around a tiny dog. She is not related to me. This cousin is a demon. I think her mother taught her how to pole dance already.

I am at a loss of anything unique to say about the actual meal. It was, and always is, very good. There should be more Thanksgiving songs. My brother plays too much minecraft. He likes violence. I love him. We just built a tree house, with a tennis ball gun turret to fend off invaders.

Chumley the garbage disposal/dog

Normally, My thanksgiving would be perfect. A family sitting around the table listing off what they are thankful for and then carving up a beautiful turkey and stuffing ourselves plump. This Thanksgiving was much different.
For starters, we never travel, but this year we decided to drive up to Tekonsha, Michigan to share this wonderful holiday with family. When I woke up Thursday morning, everything seemed normal. I ate breakfast, got ready, and headed towards my Aunt's house. Immediately after stepping out of the car, I was greeted by Chumley, the cutest/ugliest Bulldog you will ever meet.
After slobbering all over my Rubiks cube, and (I'm almost positive) ruining it forever, Chumley began to wander around the house begging for any scraps of pie crust or turkey carvings that he could manage.
We finished cooking all the delicious food, slapped it on serving trays, and carried it downstairs to be arranged on the long buffet style table. Chumley followed undoubtedly. The whole family ate and visited and laughed and danced around in Hanna Montana wigs and all the normal Thanksgiving traditions, meanwhile, Chumley was trying his hardest to reach the platter of Ham. Inevitably, He succeeded in knocking the platter off the table, and consuming half of the ham in one swallow.
THis is my wonderful Thanksgiving experience of the year. Never to happen quite the same ever again.

Stock Image

The stock image of Thanksgiving described in the prompt is my Thanksgiving. This year, my dad’s side of the family gathered at my paternal grandparents house in St. Louis, and all 32 of us sat down at two large fancy tables and attempted to eat enough food for 50 people. My grandmother makes all the food, and she starts at about 9 in the morning and cooks for 10-11 hours straight. I think she genuinely enjoys it because she never accepts any of the help offered to her and she is always in a great mood throughout the process. Being a grandmother, she has endless stories and morals, but if she had to have one motto it would be “Restraint equals regret.” This phrase is exemplified in the enormous amounts of food. There are two different types of turkey, one traditional and one boneless, stuffed with meat pâté. There are two beef tenderloins wrapped in bacon, roast chicken, cream corn, spinach lasagna, sweet potatoes in bourbon sauce, polentas, two kinds of stuffing (meat and vegetarian), pasta, fried snapper with tomato sauce, rolls, the most enormous bowl of mashed potatoes you have ever seen, peach pie, cherry pie, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, and ice cream. We eat as much as we can and don’t regret a single bite.

I am the oldest of sixteen cousins on my dad’s side. My grandmother’s house is not huge, so the adults and the younger kids have to stay at a nearby hotel. But the older kids get to stay at the house and watch movies and have fun as late as they want, and my favorite memories of Thanksgiving are probably born during this time. I can confidently say that I love this holiday because I love spending time with my family.

Thanksgiving

Turkey with the works. I'm talkin' mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, peas, rolls, pumpkin pie, AND carrot cake. That's what Thanksgiving is at the Gilbert household. My mother slaves over the stove for days. My father sits. My sister reads. My grandparents arrive. Of course, the car pulls in just in time to eat the arduously prepared meal. "Love and hugs" (as my mother would say) is doled out. Smiles plastered on our faces, all six of my family sit down at the table - china plates, silver silverware, fancy napkins. We're all dressed up, pretentious almost.

Then for the next hour, we sit in silence, eating, pretending to be a family we are not. The occasional praise for the food breaks through the silence. Finally, when we have downed enough food to feed homeless orphans for a week, we waddle into the family room to assume our nature couch potato state of being.

Once my family has succumbed to dreamless sleep, I escape to the depths of my basement. There, I huddle with my warm blanket in the corner of my coach while watching the outrageous adventures of the wonderful Doctor and his companions.

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving has been, thankfully, always quite an enjoyable holiday for me. Th idyllic silver-set table and hordes of laughing red-cheeked guests has always been the reality around my household, sometimes with strangers, but usually with family. This year all the kids and cousins were reeled in from their respective colleges, my mothers brother and sister flew into town and my Grandparents were shuttled in from the countryside. Though at one point Thanksgiving had been that mawkish rite of, "I'm Thankful for...", its hardly avoidable with Grandparents and their mushy sentimentality, it has evolved much as I've gotten older. Instead of my childish knees knocking against one another from helpless anticipation of a steaming mound of Smarshed-taters with gravy all around, I find myself casually making small talk with my far flung relatives. The meal has become more of an afterthought. Dinnertime manners have forced me to forsake my mastery of the mashed potato volcano in lieu of more appropriate means of entertainment. One thing that marked this year by degrees was the abundance of spirits. Nearly all of my cousins are of age and all of the adults partook heavily as well, I hate to put it so bluntly but I've never seen so few people polish off so many drinks. With the drinks came a liberty of spirit, apprehensions about having to see these near strangers melted away, conversation became easy and a merry Thanksgiving was had by all. It was a good year, I doubt I'll see any a whole lot better.

GivingThanks

Steam comes off a perfectly cooked Turkey smiles all around. Grandma made her famous pies and casseroles. Aunt Jemima boiled her delicious dumplings. The children wait patiently sitting in their perfect clothes  at their own designted table. All the food is prepared and ready to eat but first a blessing, then everyone sincerely says what they are thankful for.
Unfortunately this is a picture realistically known to few on Thanksgiving. Coming from a relatively large family, my mom from a family of 7 there are plenty of aunts, uncles, cousins, and random strangers.  Our thanksgivings tend to be at my aunt's house due to the fact that its the only house that can accomodate such a large number of people. Thansgiving used to be so fun when I was younger. All of the cousins were relatively the same age ad we would go to my uncle's house in Ohio for the whole break and have so much fun. Now that I've grown up to some degree Thanksgiving seems so much different. There's a new wave of little cousins running, and crying all over the house breaking and spilling things. Everybody else trying to help,but really getting inthe way trying to prepare all of the food half of which won't get eaten. I think we 've all forgotten the true meaning of thanksgiving as we have many holidays. We are thankful for nothing for a bounty of great food which we will regret eating the next day when we step on the scale. We take so much for granted.
Since I began wrestlng and cutting weight as much as I love eating and food  I love and hate thanksgiving. Usually therre's a wrestling meet the next week and after thanksgiving I'm close to 15 pounds over where I'm supposed to be and the whole next week is miserable.
A memorable thanksgiving would have to be the last one in Ohio when it snowed and we had lots of fun the end.

SELFISH THANKSGIVING

The stock image Thanksgiving involves a lot of people around a nicely decorated table with a large turkey and a ridiculous amount of extra food. This image doesn't always depict the reality of the holiday though.

What does your Thanksgiving look like? Do you enjoy the holiday? What is your strangest or most wonderful memory of the holiday?

Although thanksgiving has an ideal picture, I don't think this is very realistic. Why is thanksgiving a day known for stuffing your face? By definition, it is a day to give thanks, so why is it a day that we indulge ourselves so much. And then, starting at 12 O' clock, people wait in lines and get so involved in buying things at a 'sale.' People get so into shopping that they push and shove, and there have been instances where people have died from being trampled. And this is the day after we have been 'thankful for what we have'?? This just does not seem logical to me, and it is actually sickening if you think about it. Thanksgiving should be a day in which we give back to others to show our thankfulness, instead of furthering our consumerist society. 

My thanksgiving is usually with either my mom or dad's side of the family. A tradition that we upheld this year is going on a trip to the Greenbrier together. We spent a lot of time together and made great memories. If we don't go on this trip, we have our family to our house to have dinner. I do enjoy the holiday because I love spending time with my family, and I love food. It's kind of a day where I don't get weird looks for eating so much. Yes, I know I am contradicting what I said in the paragraph above, but I do enjoy thanksgiving! My most wonderful memory of the holiday was last year when my family volunteering at Sals and served the homeless. This is what I pictured thanksgiving to really be about. The people were so thankful to be given food, except some were very greedy and would get very upset about their drink not being diet or something like that. Another great memory was at this thanksgiving dinner. My aunt and uncle adopted a little girl, Lifu, from China a few years ago. She is 6 years old and can sometimes be a handful. She always goes "you know what?" and usually follows up with something annoying like i can spell supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, but this was different. After we were at dinner very late, she said, "You know what? Guys, it's not about the food; it is about the time we spend together." This really stuck with me and made me happy that the youngest person at the table truly understood the holiday best.

ThanksKilling

(The title of this post has nothing to do with the content of the post - it's just an eye catcher, really. It's also a suggestion to go watch one of the worst/most hilarious 'horror' movies ever. It's called, surprise, surprise, ThanksKilling, and it's about a homicidal turkey. It's terrible... terribly AWESOME.)

Normally, our Thanksgiving involves my very stressed out mother feeding a house full of immediate family members and a bunch of drunken foreigners and grad students. However, this year, much to my relief, we departed from the usual.

What we got instead was probably the most pathetic Thanksgiving ever.

As opposed to hosting way too many people in a cramped dining room, we instead had a handful of acquaintances over for hors d'oeuvres. And that was it. My dad was cooking oysters (which only he and one other person out of the ~10 there ate) and mom had laid out a spread of several different kinds of chips and dip. No turkey, not even any of the sweet potato casserole my dad had already made. Just... chips and dip. 

Along with the unsatisfying food options, I was forced to socialize with people I barely knew. That's never fun. 

After a while I just ducked upstairs and crouched in front of my computer, wishing I had some actual protein to chow down on. I could have technically gone over to my aunt-in-law's house (which is where my brother and sister-in-law had darted off to an hour and a half after our 4 PM Thanksgiving snack-a-thon began) for real Thanksgiving food, but my lack of effort and desire to interact with my fellow man won out.

Instead, I just had microwaved pot roast leftovers for supper. Yum, yum.

Needless to say, I didn't have much fun. The best part was when I had a glass of pink champagne (with my mother's permission, hoo hoo), but that's because I'm a stupid little girl that actually /likes/ that stuff. 

In general, though, Thanksgiving's alright. Not my favorite, but not my least favorite, either. You get yummy food, but you have to pay the price of interacting with people you'd rather not interact with. 

To answer the entire prompt, I think my strangest memory of the holiday is from when I was about 8 and obsessed with Napoleon Dynamite and decided to end the evening by doing the dance that Napoleon does for all of our inebriated guests.

I look back upon that memory with utmost shame.

Thanksgiving

I don’t care that much about food on Thanksgiving. Yes, I said it. I don’t wake up on Thanksgiving and rush toward the kitchen in hope that the turkey and pie are done. Don’t get me wrong: I love those things, and by all measures I eat way too much of them. Seriously, an empty pie tin is sitting right next to me as I type this. But considering the way I eat on a regular basis, I don’t think my body distinguishes much between Thanksgiving Day and any other plain old day. I’m not proud of it, but if I’m being honest here, I binge while I’m sleeping. So food’s only about 10% of the appeal for me.

The real appeal of Thanksgiving is that it’s on the cusp of winter. It’s the threshold to the Christmas season. And I know once I’ve hit that benchmark, it’s only so much longer until winter break, which, beside summer break, is pretty much the only time during the school year when I have a soul. I hate everything until about the second week of December. When that ends, I’m reincarnated as a different human being. A human being with more than one facial expression. It’s incredible. I’d tell you to come witness the staggering metamorphosis so you could see I have the capability of expressing joy, but really I don’t like anyone being within a ten foot radius of me when I actually have free time.

So that’s what I like about Thanksgiving. I know that wasn’t really about the holiday itself, per se, but if I told you that my family just eats and sleeps that wouldn’t have satisfied the 150-word requirement.

Suck it Up

The Brewer Thanksgiving is about as original as you can get. All of my family (which is fairly small) gathers together at one of our houses, and we have an extravagant meal. Fortunately, we do not have to worry about the nightmare of traveling because almost all of my family lives here in Lexington. Actually, I only have one close relative who lives outside of Kentucky, and she never comes in for Thanksgiving. Anyways, our Thanksgiving is pretty typical. I would say I like the holiday, mostly because it preps me for my favorite time of year...CHRISTMAS!! I also like the holiday because its always been a steady tradition in my family, and I look forward to it every year. We have only traveled twice in my life for the holiday. The last time we traveled, we all went to the Greenbrier in West Virginia. I was 10, and I guess would classify this as my strangest memory of the holiday. I remember that I really wanted my ears pierced, and my mom would not even consider it for me. The weather that week was amazing and we were lucky enough to spend a good portion of our time outside. On Thanksgiving day, my dad suggested that all of us should take a nice bike ride through the resort. I swear, we were not even ten minutes into the adventure when my sister ran straight into my bike, making me topple over. I caught myself directly on my wrist. Well, I started sobbing, and my father thought that I was just being a wimp and he grabbed me, telling me to "suck it up". Eventually, he took me to my grandfather who is a doctor, and my grandfather suggested that they take me to the ER. Long story-short, I ended up fracturing my wrist. My dad felt terrible. I remember wanting to scream "I TOLD YOU SO!" in his face, but I knew he sincerely felt bad about it, so I held it in. Actually, he felt so bad about it that when he came to see me in the ER, he asked me what he could do to make it up to me. Well my smart 10 year old mind went straight to the thing I wanted most...my ears pierced. So, I asked him if I was allowed, and he said yes! My mother was absolutely livid because she had lost a battle she was determined to win. Lucky for her, I chickened out and didn't get my ears pierced until 6 months later, but the point of the obnoxiously long story was to show my strangest memory of Thanksgiving I have. It is definitely one I will not forget.  

thanksgiving

i am somewhat ambivalent towards thanksgiving. i have to go to my grandmother's every other year. i do not like that side of the family. however, i do not let this time go to waste because i take that opportunity to completely screw with all of them, and my parents and brother and two of my cousins go along with it. i am thankful that i will never be forced to spend another thanksgiving out there against my will. the next time i go will just be to show off a fake communist boyfriend with dreadlocks and tattoos or something. the other years where i don't have to go to my grandmother's we spend at home and 3 of my cousins come in. they are 5,8,and 10 year old girls. i spent the last 5 days alternately playing with them and hiding for hours on end. they picked the lock to my room at one point when i was hiding and pretending to not be in there. it was exhausting. the food is the normal thanksgiving food. i love mashed potatoes and gravy with cranberry sauce. i help cook everything. i usually wake up early the next day and put up christmas decorations. to sum up my thanksgiving, i eat lots of delicious food, act all mischievous, genuinely enjoy some of my family, and then get tired of people and avoid everyone. 

Turkey and lots of Ducks

My Thanksgiving depends on the year because every other year my mom, dad, brother, and I drive down to Nashville and spend Thanksgiving with my dad's family and the other years we spend it with my mom's family. This year, we traveled to Nashville. My brother had gone done Tuesday night with my gran and grandad, and my parents and I left wednesday around noon. We had mexican food Wednesday followed by some Duck Dynasty on A&E, if you haven't watched this and enjoy redneck reality TV shows I strongly recommend this show. Then my cousin had talked me into going to see Breaking Dawn Part 2 with her because after already seeing it twice, she wanted to go again. Thanksgiving day began with a five mile run-walk, The Boulevard Bolt, that raises money for the homeless. Generally people come dressed in workout attire, but some come dressed as reindeer and what not, but this year there were four men, probably college age, that had set up a conference table with office chairs, a laptop, a printer, and papers everywhere and they were dressed as business men on the top but had jean short shorts on the bottom. They ran the whole thing with their brief cases and coffee mugs. My cousin and I ran a little over four miles of the entire thing. After everyone cleaned up and got dressed up we ate our big Thanksgiving meal around one. Shortly after that we all changed and went out on my aunt and uncles porch where a fire had been built and I laid down on the couch and took a nap. After the football game had ended we watched The Campaign and more Duck Dynasty. Friday was honestly a day of doing nothing but laying on the couch watching football, the UK basketball game, and movies. My uncle had taken their black lab duck hunting with his friends, so my aunt and uncles corgi was in need of attention and thought I would give it to her. She slept most of the day on the lap. My family doesn't get together much more than once a year. We see each other every Christmas for a day and every other Thanksgiving. I don't really enjoy the holiday because I am the eldest non adult and have to come up with things to do but I would rather chill and listen to music. My family gets along, at least on the outside, so its not like they fight all the time. Its more a pain for me to pack and then unpack and worry about homework. I am also not an entourage person. I don't like people following me aroung.

Thanksgiving - Kono

My family doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving. Partly because of our nationality and partly because of my religion. So I don't know what to really write about. I guess I should explain what I do on Thanksgiving then. Well, since one of my brothers comes home from college for Thanksgiving break it is a special occasion in which my mother decides to cook a special meal. For example, we ate "koroke" on Thanksgiving night. It's not of Japanese origin. It's basically mashed potatoes rolled in bread crumbs and fried. It's absolutely delicious. Okay, anyway. That's the sum of my Thanksgiving this year. We enjoy Black Friday I guess. Except by the time we get to the stores we're searching through the leftover items for something good. Just for the heck of it I might as well say why I don't celebrate. I believe that there should not just be one day to give thanks. We should be thankful everyday of our lives for our family, our friends, the food we eat, and the homes we live in. We should be thankful everyday for every fortunate thing we possess.

No More New York

I legitimately think Thanksgiving is a nice holiday. When I envision Thanksgiving, I think about my family's old tradition, which changed a couple of years ago when my grandparents moved from the NYC area to South Florida (as Jewish grandparents are wont to do). Each Thanksgiving, we would fly to New Jersey, spend three or four days in their apartment, and hang out with that side of the family (grandparents and one set of aunt/uncle/cousins). The food was all over the place: my grandmother is an excellent baker but an average cook and would occasionally prepare the food too far in advance (old matzah balls, not the tastiest). My nuclear family would also spend a day in the city each year, which is one of the few places I really like Christmas decorations. Rather than the tawdry, mawkish music and decor we seem to relish here, the windows at Macy's and the Times Square tree are really quite pleasant.

Now, with my grandparents in South Florida, my mom's sister's family still in the NY area, and my sister in college, we do Thanksgiving on a smaller scale. We still watch the Macy's parade and enjoy a sizable, Jewish, vegetarian (no Tofurkey) Thanksgiving meal. We spend time together as a family, often hiking. But it's no longer the event it used to be. There's no huge tragedy in that-- we'll still see all of our family, though I do miss our annual sojourns to NYC.

Thanksgiving

This is probably going to be my most boring blog post to date, because frankly Thanksgiving is the holiday my family is least interested in, and we have very few traditions for it. I'd say the average Sommer Thanksgiving is pretty much just like the so-called "stock picture" Thanksgiving on a smaller scale - four people, gathered around a moderately large antique table, with a nicer-than-usual setup including a couple of candles; eating a lot of food that we never quite finish (though the turkey is always in the kitchen, we just slice it a bit and put it on a plate.) The food varies little: turkey, cranberry sauce, corn casserole, mashed potatoes (those are my favorite), dressing, and broccoli casserole (which my mom always end up eating alone). The only variety this year was due to my becoming a vegetarian since last Thanksgiving, so there was a little plate of faux turkey for myself to eat. All in all, a Sommer Thanksgiving is not a particularly exciting affair, and in truth I don't really have any interesting anecdotes to speak of.

(But hey at least this one was short).

The Unoriginal Thanksgiving

The Pedersons don't quite go all out for Thanksgiving. Sure, there's a turkey, some kale salad, and deviled eggs, but it's not a holiday any of us really look forward to. Thanksgiving means making a large sum of food for such a small group of people. We're doomed with the leftovers for weeks, and it seems the pumpkin pie is always eaten first and the stuffing left last. Grandma thinks the mashed potatoes must be "just right" - so there she goes, slaving away for two hours to mash the potatoes by hand into such a soft, fluffy texture that a cloud would have a resting place. We all get our meals at separate times, someone always slips the fat dog a piece of turkey, and the cat always jumps up on the table when she smells the gravy. No one is really sure of what they're supposed to be thankful for; there they go, thanking Aunt for the "real good cranberry bread" and mom for the "weird fruit salad". We all gather on weekends to eat dinner, so this meal is no different. Set a table for 6 and you're halfway there to the Pederson hoe-downs. We all sit down on the couches, holding our stomachs, and pretending to watch football while we drift into that awful post-meal daze. Having such a small family is great at times, but it also feels like we've missed out on the incredibly trite and commonplace Thanksgivings everyone seems to enjoy.

Leftovers anyone?

My perception of Thanksgiving changes depending on the year. Most years, I travel to one of my family member’s homes and just have the traditional meal and family fun time. However, every fourth year, when my birthday falls on thanksgiving, the holiday celebration takes place at our house, and generally, no one comes. Whether this has something to do with the fact that its my birthday or not, I don’t know. But what I do know is that sometimes, less people makes the job of entertaining my little cousin Carter a lot easier. This past year was in fact one of those years, and as usual, it resulted in far too much food, and a lot of awkward realizations that it was indeed my birthday today.

My favorite memory I have isn’t exceptionally cheery or celebratory at all. My cousin, Seth, decided he wanted to spend Thanksgiving night over at our house, and so he did. As we were playing Super Smash Brothers on Gamecube, I started to notice the frequency with which he was leaving and going to the bathroom. “are you ok?” I asked him, and to my surprise, he confessed that he had been throwing up all night, and told no one. So, Seth went home. The next morning I woke up to chaos. My entire family were heaving and puking. It was rare for someone to go ten minutes without hearing someone else in the bathroom throwing up again. Lucky for me, I have a killer immune system, and I didn’t get sick until the next day, and only threw up ten times. My sister, who got the worst of it, blew chunks upwards of 40 times in those two days. This will most likely always be my favorite memory of Thanksgiving endeavors.

Turkey Day

My entire family aside from me and my parents live in Western Kentucky so every Thanksgiving we pack up our bags, load into the car, and make the four hour journey to Paducah and Mayfield, Kentucky. We first spend the night at my mom's mother's house where we usually just lay around and play cards. Then the next morning we head to my Aunt Jackie's where my mom's side of the family gathers. We watch the parade and then the dog show until football comes on. Then it's time for food. You name it, (except for mashed potatoes this year) and we have it. So much food. Too much food. But it's all delicious and we all manage to stuff it down our throats, which we'll all regret for the next week. Then while the younger kids go outside and play I stay inside with the men to watch football while the women gossip about the latest family issues in a little circle in the back of the room. 

Later that night my mom, dad, and I drive to my memaw and pepaw's where yet another Thanksgiving feast awaits us (which none of us partake in). My mom and I usually sit in the living room and watch a movie while Dad's side of the family chatters loudly and eats all sorts of yummies. As the night passes, people start to part ways and finally it's just us. The next day we head back to my grandmother's house where we spend another night and then leave the next morning to return to home sweet home, and where I dreadfully return to a large pile of homework. 

I don't particularly enjoy this holiday just because of the traveling, chaos, family issues flaring up, and that awful feeling of having eaten too much yet again even after you promise yourself this year you wouldn't eat as much. Nevertheless, they're family and it's always good to get away from Lexington for just a little while. However, I have to admit my favorite memory is one of the saddest moments I have during the holidays. This is visiting my granddaddy at Elsey Cemetery. Sitting by his grave and quietly talking to him is just the perfect way to end the day. Even though it's so emotional, no one is in my face, and getting to talk to one of my favorite people ever is the best feeling in the world.

Overall, Thanksgiving is just insane but it's also a nice break from reality. Escaping the crazy hectic life of school and friends is nice and getting to spend time with family is always a moment you can cherish.