!! THANKSGIVING !!

🍗 + 👪 + 🏈
{{IT'S HERE!!!}}

There is so much signified by this holiday, and for ALL of it I am wholly grateful.
The first thing on my agenda today: Bake a pie. Ya know, because food is like, 90% of why we all gather together at 2 in the afternoon on Thanksgiving as opposed to normal-people dinner times of like, 5 or 6....

>> 🍛 <<

And then, we loaded up the pups for the mini road trip to Mt. Vernon [Sydni's with dad this year for Thanksgiving.. she'll join in on the travelling extravaganza for Christmas!] to my parents' house.

💑 + 🐶🐶 ➡🚕➡ 🏠

Once we were there, it was only a few short hours before we all loaded up again for the short trip out to my cousins' house in Fredericktown, where the real festivities for the day would be taking place. We probably would've opted for a later dinner, but since my cousin's wife is in retail, and the world has disappointingly digressed to a place where we just... must... shop ON Thanksgiving, she had to leave earlier than originally planned.. to go to work.

Let me just take one second to say, on behalf of my family & every other family who has been interrupted by this STUPID new phenomenom of "pre-Black Friday" shopping:

 

{{NO. YOU REALLY SHOULD BE ASHAMED if SHOPPING on THANKSGIVING is a higher priority to you than spending time with your family. SURE, I get it: some of us don't have the opportunity to be with our families today, or even more unfortunately don't have families we want to be around, but really? We're diluted, admit it.
I REFUSE to shop on THANKSGIVING... because MY PRIORITIES are PEOPLE, not THINGS. }} //end rant

 

Aaaaanyway, we made the best of the day and wasted very little time digging into the meal collaboratively constructed by my family. It of course, wouldn't have been complete without a little company. Mine happened to be my cousins' 15-year old parrot, Joey. He, like a typical teenage boy, seemed fascinated with the simple fact that I was a female, and refused to perch on anyone else's shoulder for a few hours. Oh, teenagers... ;)  

🐦 💘

😏🐥

It was so nice to spend the evening with my cousins; the "younger" ones, both now in their twenties, are 6 feet tall with beards. With my birthday being tomorrow, I feel exponentially older combining that with the fact that I remember them both when they were babies. Good grief. I love my family (:

Oh, and I almost forgot... [sorry!!] our family's annual, sometimes grueling tradition of watching THIS... literally every..... year on Thanksgiving. I somehow skipped last year, so by default I was way overdue.

🎄 griswalds! 🎄

That's a wrap here, blogbots.
Happy Thanksgiving, to you and yours!

xo | cmd