Sunday, November 27, 2011

Holiday Stories

1. I asked my family if they could remember a funny story from the holidays. They thought of one, which was when my sisters and cousins and I were younger, we would spend our Christmases up north at the lake. Apparently,  my younger sister (only a year old at the time, and had just learned to walk) hit my dad's car keys in a random drawer in a bedroom upstairs. Panic ensued when the keys were nowhere to be found, as my whole family searched frantically. My dad thought he maybe lost the keys when snowmobiling. Great, that narrowed it down. They're just somewhere on  the lake, all 9 square miles of it. Eventually, hours later, my little sister grabbed my grandpa's hand and led him up the stairs, pointing at the drawer where she hid the keys.

2. One funny holiday story that I can actually remember is two years ago for Thanksgiving we stayed with my dad's parents in Wisconsin, and other relatives drove in from Iowa. We figured we'd skip cooking this year and instead go out for a nice Thanksgiving dinner. My family and I were all excited as we pulled up to this nice restaurant, only to order the "Thanksgiving feast" and have a pile of brown, tasteless mush set in front of us. Actually, it was food that should be brown, such as turkey and stuffing. However it was more dull than brown, almost a gray. Everything on the plate had the same texture:mushy. This mush also had the same taste: almost like you took stuffing and mashed it up so much it became mushy, chunky soup. I looked around at everyone picking at their food, wondering if I was the only one to think that. All I ate was the side of cranberry sauce, because it was red and not brown. I whispered to my sisters, and they said they thought the same thing. So we would not waste our food, we built sculptures out of our food, because it was squishy and molded perfectly. I built a heaping volcano, because we were given enormous amounts of food. As soon as we arrived back at my grandparents we agreed to cook the meals ourselves, because we would rather cook the food ourselves than pay for that again.

3. I have a lot to talk about for this story, but I will try to just explain the highlights. This year for Thanksgiving someone had the genius idea to rent an RV with 11 of my family members and drive down to Austin, Texas to visit my aunt and uncle. Well, we made it back alive, I'll say that. It was also an experience, one I am okay with not experiencing again for a number of years. I loved being in Texas, however the 23 hour drive was somewhat brutal. I ran out of movies within the first day of driving (we drove four days, two there & two back), and so I rewatched them, and then rewatched them again. Among my favorite memories though was our last night in Austin we went to a BBQ place along a river. The river was totally like a scene from the show River Monsters because the water was dark and murky, there were no houses and the shadows of three feet long fish swam by us as we were standing on the dock. There were also about six baby turtles, and my uncle was brave enough to scoop some out of the water and watch them walk on the dock, eventually waddling back and plunging over the drop into the water. My favorite part of the evening, however, was when we got our food. Everyone ordered ribs, however my uncle ordered the "King's feast." We were not sure why it had this name until the plate was set in front of him. They were beef ribs, and were about two feet wide and a food tall. They weren't even on a plate, they were on a platter. All seven pounds of it. We have this hilarious picture of him with a bib on, the platter in front of him, and his wrists on the table, knife in one hand and fork in the other. Among other funny memories were the conversations after my relatives had visited three bars in one day, and then came home to drink some more (my aunt counted 14 corks, when we were only there for two days and only 10 of us can actually drink). Another highlight was celebrating my dad's birthday, and I got to his phone and changed his ringtone to "I'm Sexy and I Know it." His face, and everyone else's was priceless when it went off (and then kept going off in stores because he forgot to change it.) Yes, it was a memorable Thanksgiving, but I am more thankful that I am home.

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