was your Thanksgiving crazy?

The day before Thanksgiving Melinda and I headed up to NC for our annual Christmas tree hunt @ Elk River Evergreens, a great place to find a tree. All you have to do is roam around the farm, find your tree, flag down some workers on a four wheeler yielding a chainsaw. (I checked with the owners & they do have up to date visas)

Luckily we found our tree and the one next to it looked acceptable for Melinda's Mom so we took them both and headed back home before anyone changed their mind.

Melinda and I got up early Thurs. morning and headed over the mountains into NC again to spend Thanksgiving with her Mom (Nana), Todd the plumber (her husband), her brother Dustin, his girlfriend Melissa, and their 1 year old son Chase from Pee Ya. As we drove in Dustin sent us a text message that all hell was breaking loose at Mom's house, apparently she had bitten off a bit more than she could chew with dinner and so had the oven. It bit the dust early that morning with nothing cooked except for a couple of pies.

Luckily a spare oven was located by Todd the plumber and after a bit of fussing, cleaning, & oven relocating we were back in business but a bit behind schedule. We had breakfast at noon and lunch @ dinner time, or for those of you in TN, that would be biscuits for dinner and dinner for supper or something like that.

After breakfast/dinner or lunch depending on where your from we killed a few hours while Melinda and her Mom cooked the bird and several casseroles. Dustin had yet to fix the free hub that he crunched back @ Douthat so I called several bike shops until I found one previously that week and we did our best to install it without any of the proper tools necessary. A few hot laps around the yard proved our efforts a success but the making of short bike videos were brought to an abrupt halt when Todd the plumber realized we were riding bikes in his yard and came out madder than a hornet and told us to get off his grass.

Not wanting to get thrown out of his house before dinner or supper was served we put the bike away and went inside to find something more productive to do. Chase, Dustin's kid had just had a birthday and Melinda and I bought him his first set of wheels. I wanted to have the ride assembled before our arrival but Melinda wanted to see him open the present, I stated that a 1 year old does not comprehend opening a present or the pictures on a box. He does comprehend the gift already assembled with a bow. She disagreed and as I assumed Chase looked at the giant wrapped box and instead of unwrapping it and cheering with glee at the box he pulled off the bow and played with it in the floor while Nana and Melissa finished unwrapping his new ride.

In protest I left the assembly of the new wheels up to Dustin and Todd the plumber. I was positive that a plumber and a guy who can rebuild a muscle car could easily assemble a small kids first set of wheels. Not so, I could hear a series of obscenities being used, so I decided to investigate the problem. Upon entering the living room where the assembly was supposed to be taking place I found Todd the plumber trying to drive a screw into plastic with a hammer while Dustin read the Spanish directions. I took over as Todd the plumber walked off mumbling something about "I like to see you do it any better". I tossed the hammer to the side after a quick inventory of the parts reveiled that there were no nails involved and proceeded to finish the job reading the English version of the instructions.

When the bird came out of the oven I was instructed that it was my job to carve the bird since I had watched a cooking show previously in the week on how to properly carve a turkey. I really wasn't to sure about my skills but Melinda insisted anyway.

While everyone was busy cooking or watching TV, Chase decided to entertain himself in the bathroom, I swear I didn't provoke him to pull the toilet paper off the roll, well no more than 3 times.

Jackson, tired from all the cooking and TV watching found a suitable place to nap on one of the other grandkid's barbie couch.

Once all the TV shows were watched and all the food was prepared we all sat down to a delicious meal that took all day to prepare but less than 45 minutes to consume and 2 hours to clean up. It was a great day but I'm glad thanksgiving only comes once a year.