So a very belated Happy Thanksgiving post. Where does the time go? Laura and I were watching a Muppet Christmas Carol last night (yes, that may or may not be a favorite Christmas movie of mine…don’t judge) and suddenly we realized that we did not blog about our Thanksgiving adventures. So while it is almost Christmas, it is never to late to give thanks and in fact it’s pretty cool to give thanks at Christmas time. So Laura and I re-enter the blogosphere with some catching up to do starting with Thanksgiving.
This year it was our turn to spend thanksgiving with my parents in Mississippi. So Laura got off of work a little bit early, on Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day. When she got home from work, we packed up our suitcase and what ever else we could think of to bring like work out clothes, games, etc. The one thing we forgot to bring was the Wii. I wanted to show my parents the Wii because I thought they would get a kick out of it and we could play the game that they got us which is Just Dance 3! After loading the car and filling up the tank, we set off on our 6 hour escapade to the prairie-lands of Starkville. The trip gets kind of long so we made a few stops along the way to get out of the car and stretch. But I think what made it seem so long this time was the fact that we left and it was already about dark. So the whole trip was at night. I mean, we arrived at like 11 pm CST but it felt like we were driving all through the night. But we made it safely and arrived at my parents house just in time for bed.
The next day was Thanksgiving Day, and we got up and pretty much just had a day at home. We watched some of the Macy’s day parade, talked and hung out with the ‘rents, and prepared our dinner. We were planning on actually eating the food for dinner, but we all got hungry early and so we ended up eating at a weird time like 3:30. But the food was really really good. This year my parents actually smoked the turkey, well they themselves didn’t smoke it, but there’s a meat guy in Starkville that will smoke any meat you bring him. So my parents bought the turkey a couple of days before, dropped it off at the meat guy, and he smoked it for hours. It was amazing. It was so tender and juicy and smoky. I don’t know if I can go back to regular turkey now because that was just fantastic. With full bellies and tryptophan taking it’s toll in our blood stream, we all hunkered down for a relaxing evening. We watched an old Christmas movie, I think it was Christmas in Connecticut, which was fantastic. We also played our new favorite game, Telestrations! We all got some good laughs out of that one. Eventually, heavy eye lids won the battle against awakeness and we all turned in ready to do some black Friday shopping.
Now, I for one don’t really care for shopping, much less on a day when a bajillion other people are acting crazy just to get stuff, but me dear, lovely bride really enjoys shopping and being out in the crowd and finding good deals, so we were going to go shopping. The question was where? There is really nothing in Starkville and I’m pretty sure the General Store was closed for the holidays. So we decided we’d all take a brief trip down to the ‘burbs of Jackson MS where all of the modern conveniences for purchasing power were located. As much as I don’t really like this shopping day, we did find some good deals. We bought some great toys for the kiddos back in Atlanta. Laura got some new digs which was handy, because while we were eating lunch at a cafe called Newks, my Dad noticed a gaping hole under the left armpit of Laura’s cozy green sweater. But since she had just bought some new comfy clothes, a quick trip to the bathroom restored Laura into good fashion standing and the shopping day could continue. My dad was actually the big winner of the trip, ironically. He found a basketball hoop that was like $400 off. Unfortunately, we drove to Jackson in the civic so arrangements had to be made to pick it up the following week when he could bring his truck. Dad also found some plants on sale at his new favorite plant nursery, which I helped him plant the next day. That evening after returning from the land of things to buy, we had some left over thanksgiving dinner and hit the hay literally (just kidding…Starkville may be in the country but it is not that country!)
The next day, Saturday, it was time to once again hang out so we went on a walk around the farm enjoying the beautiful weather. As I mentioned early, I helped my dad do some yard work and other things that he needed a strong young man’s help for. And then we carved out time for the Georgia/GaTech game, which the dawgs won! That night we got BBQ from a famous BBQ place and watched some more football and lounged around. We went to bed that night after packing up and the next morning loaded up the car for a return trip home with a brief stop in ATL to visit Laura’s family before arriving back in Augusta town. It was a lot of traveling but it was a very fun and relaxing trip. Merry Thanksmas, and to all a goodnight!!!
