Thanksgiving Memories

First, Happy Thanksgiving to Everybody!!

Second, I was thinking of things to write about and got to thinking about some of the different Thanksgiving that I've had. A number have stuck out in my memory, both happy and bittersweet. But one to this day still makes me laugh.

My senior year at Texas A&M I was living off campus in a duplex with two other girls. I was working in a really cute little restaurant as did one of my roommates. That year I was unable to go home for Thanksgiving because the Aggies were playing their annual game against t.u. at Kyle Field and I had to go to the game as well as work, so my wonderful family drove down for the day and brought dinner to me and my one roommate, Kim, who stayed in town.

But, we have to go back in time, just slightly. On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Kim calls me at the restaurant and says "I just saw a mouse in the house!! What do I do?" I of course respond with "Kim, I'm at work and can do nothing to help you. Please call one of the guys to come over and help." One of our guy friends came over and helped set a mouse trap and they managed to capture and get rid of that one.

So, jump forward to Thanksgiving. We are all sitting around my little kitchen table, Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother-in-Law, Kim, Me. My sister very calming says "Oh, look, a mouse". And there, sitting in the middle of the floor is this little baby mouse. This of course freaks us all out. My Dad grabs a broom and whacks the baby mouse, then sweeps it out the door. Dad washes his hands and we all sit down and continue dinner. A little while later, another mouse wanders out and we have to have this complete freak out again. Dad and Brother-in-Law then proceed to hunt out a couple more mice and either kill them or stun them and throw them all out into the street and/or garbage.

Eventually, the family has to leave to head back up to Dallas, thus leaving Kim and ABBA to fight off the onslaught of baby mice. By the end of the day, we managed to get rid of no less than 13 baby mice. We decided that the momma mouse was the one that Kim killed on Tuesday and by Thursday all the baby mice were getting hungry and started sending the siblings one after the other to go find momma. "Hey, Joe, you go out and find mom then bring some food back to us." When "Joe" didn't return, they started sending the rest out, one by one.

I know, not exactly the most Thanksgiving-y Thanksgiving story, but it always makes me laugh so hard that tears will run down my face!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Saturday Movie Night

No, I didn't go see Twilight or any other movie at a theatre. I did go see a movie, actually a double feature. 

My friend/boss, Terri invited me to come over to her house on Saturday as they were having drive-in movie night in their driveway. They put up a sheet over the garage door and rigged a projector and speakers up to their DVD player and showed Kung-Fu Panda and WALL-E. 

All the neighborhood kids and their parents came over and we all sat outside eating popcorn and drinking wine (well the kids drank water) and watched movies. It got pretty cold sitting out there and eventually all the kids ended up in a big pile on the driveway with blankets and pillows and all the adults were in their lawn chairs wrapped up as well. But it was really a great thing, inexpensive, and entertaining. 

I recommend everybody do this with their friends and neighbors at some time. To me, it was great to see a neighborhood gather together and just hang out like that. I remember growing up in smaller towns and all the neighborhood kids and parents getting together for things like the Fourth of July or something, but I didn't know that people still visited and shared with their neighbors in that manner. Maybe I've just been living the single life so long and going from one apartment to another, that I don't see these displays of Americana anymore. I don't know how to describe it, I guess, but it just gave me a warm fuzzy inside seeing all these kids piled up together to stay warm and all the parents gathered together to have some good, clean fun. 

Oh and Kung-Fu Panda was really good. WALL-E, I could have passed on. And I'm down one more bottle of wine.