Tanksgiving

For our break, we decided to drive home to North Carolina to visit out families. We left on Wednesday afternoon and stopped over to spend the night in Baltimore; as always, Thanksgiving traffic was a treasure. We made it to Baltimore over an hour and a half later than we expected, but the hotel was comfortable enough.

In the morning, we headed down to my grandparents' farm north of Durham for Thanksgiving lunch. As we were one of the first to arrive, Marcus helped my mom deep-fry the Thanksgiving turkey (this is the first year this debacle was attempted-- luckily, no one died or was even severely burned in the process). Tim, my stepfather, had his yearly beer-- and two more-- so he was being overly helpful (and making some winning jokes).

After leaving the farm around three, having barely eaten anything, we headed over to Lee and Katie's for Thanksgiving dinner, where we had a delicious meal and some wonderful dinner conversation. Jenny, the oldest niece, read Table Topic questions, and we answered the questions one after another. Quickly, the girls got bored and decided to watch Disney Channel, while the adult conversation turned to family history, the ranking of presidents, and how war generals earn their stars.

We left Lee and Katie's fairly early, drove back to my mom's house, and passed out. The next day, Friday, we had a leisurely breakfast with my family, then took my little sister, Zoe, over to play with Jenny and Reagan. The girls watched movies, ate candy, played outside, and jumped on Jenny's bed. After the girls wore Zoe out, we drove back to the house and had dinner. Mom challenged us to a game of Scrabble, in which she, of course, trounced us both.

When we headed back to our room for a good night's sleep, we discovered Marcus' USB drive broken completely in two. A visiting friend had carelessly sat upon our computer, breaking off the USB drive connected to it. Needless to say, this resulted in serious panic. Marcus lost many of his school plans, but luckily a majority of the data stored on the drive was backed up on our home computer. Unfortunately, he still had to recreate several assignments and rubrics on top of the grading he still had to finish.

Saturday morning, we again had a leisurely breakfast then went with my parents to buy a Christmas tree for them and ourselves. Every year since Mom and Tim married, we have shopped at the same Christmas tree lot to get our trees. That lovely gentleman is the marker for the lot. Our apartment is extremely small, and we barely have enough room for our furniture, but Mom and Tim insisted we have our own live Christmas tree for the holiday season. We bought the smallest one on the lot, even though it was still a few inches taller than me. After rearranging the trunk and stuffing the tree inside, we headed to Winston-Salem to see if anyone could help recover the data from the USB drive. Unfortunately, it was hopeless, but we returned home for lunch and to help set up their Christmas tree. We left in the early afternoon, seeing this little gem along the way, and again stopped halfway, this time in Harrisburg, VA.

Sunday morning, we woke up early and got back on the road for the remainder of our trip. There was little traffic, although New Jersey drivers always make me want to gouge my eyes with a spoon. Of course, when I was completely exhausted from driving on only fifteen minutes from our apartment, traffic stopped completely. We moved at a snail's pace for over 45 minutes, but I found that this little lady is the solution for frustration:




*This was my first time watching the actual video, and how are her versions of Michael's moves? Got'em! Bide your time for 3:17.

So after some Janet and some tears, we made it home. After unloading the car and buying enough food to at least eat tomorrow, we set up the Christmas tree! It's a little beauty, made with old white lights and hand-me-down ornaments from my mom and Marcus' mom. We are both thankful for our loving and generous families. We are incredibly lucky.

And, of course, I wouldn't be married to the man I am if this little guy wasn't strapped to the top of our Christmas tree.