I'm Thankful

I just returned from a relaxing two days in Duluth!
But reverse to the Wednesday before Thanksgiving…cook, cook, cook! I made sweet potatoes laced with bourbon that had a pecan & brown sugar crumble on top. (yum so wonderful) Loads of my famous spicy sausage and wild rice dressing, 18 deviled eggs, fresh green beans with ham & laced with bourbon (see a theme here?) A cheese ball & Three, count them, three pumpkin pies. By the time my brother added the potatoes, turkey, corn and extras…wow full! And oops I forgot that my friend Darlene made us the most heavenly dinner rolls…real homemade ones. Then to be extra sweet she made homemade caramel rolls for us too.
My knee was the size of a basket ball after standing up for two days of cooking. So then I relaxed at the hotel all day yesterday.
Thanksgiving was a fun day but Shannon & Jon weren’t there and my parents of course. It wasn’t near as fun as the old days when we were all together at mom’s. We all would have too much to drink (had to…to keep from going crazy) we argued about politics, told jokes and laughed. But in the end we would sit down to the best meal ever, cooked by mom and me and do the “I’m Thankfuls” and fell very lucky.
Incase you don’t know what the “I’m Thankfuls” are…It is where we go around the table one by one and say what we were most thankful for that year. There is a lot of pressure…we work on what we are going to say from year to year trying to out-do the next guy with the best one that makes the most people cry. But no matter how hard we try Jon P. still holds the record from the first year we did it about 15 years ago when he brought the whole table to tears saying how thankful he was to be taken in by our family and shown how a real family loves each other! It was much more eloquent than that, but that was the jest of it.
When we got home today reality sunk in…I had 13 calls to make to clients and John is still working. Oh well.
And I was thrilled to see that the neighbors had taken down the huge blowup turkeys in their yard. Although now it is filled with an entire family of polar bears, Santa-locked in a bubble-giant candy cane archways and Rudolph’s with glowing noses…and more. Well, I’m thankful I only have to look at them for two weeks longer! The Sunshine state here I come!