OW! A Thanksgiving Story.

Another Thanksgiving weekend is over and Nick and I are ready to embrace Christmas! We drove to Iowa on Wednesday night, arriving just in time for one of Nancy's delicious suppers with Erin-made cupcakes for dessert. We decided to skip playing a game and watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark instead. I thought I hadn't seen it before, but after we got to the end I realized I had. Maybe next time I'll graduate to whatever the second movie in the trilogy is!

Thanksgiving was spent with Nancy's sister, her husband, their daughter and granddaughter. We had turkey and stuffing - no suprises here! I got to watch the fantastic Packer victory (after missing the rough first quarter while eating) then napped while Erin beat Nick and the others at Scrabble. From there we headed over to Nick's grandparents, where I got to meet more family members and visit for a couple of hours. Back over to Nancy and Jeff's, where Nick won at Trains and we discovered that the rules to Sorry! actually have a subset for "adults only" play. We switched halfway through and I won the game!

Friday was our lazy day. The kids slept in while the grown-ups went to work. We went and bothered Nancy at the post office, then got lunch at Godfather's while we waited for the lady to measure Nick for a tux to get back from lunch. After Nick was taken care of, we drove home and Nick and Jeff headed out to Jeff's hunting "shed" while I won three games of Trains (two against Nancy and Erin and one against just Erin). Then we went to the "shed" as well. Jeff has built a pretty cool 3-story building out on his hunting land. We had a cookout on the second-level balcony and sat inside for a while to visit. We then swung by Nancy's sister's house because I have never seen it. She lives in a very nice log "cabin" that is huge. I loved her decorating style. We played a game of Scrabble (won by Erin at the last minute) and Balderdash (won by Nick's cousin) before heading home. Nancy and Jeff were still up and Jeff joined us for some Euchre. Nick and I lost two of three games to him and Erin. Then we got devious - Jeff quit and Erin went upstairs and Nick and I pulled all the queens out of the Euchre deck. I dominated at 3-handed: won every time and got to 15 first by a landslide (Nick had 1 and Erin had -1). I was golden! Then we played Sorry. We decided that it wasn't fair to have one side of the board open so we made a ghost player to take over that side. The three of us played using the newly found "adult" rules and the ghost played the kid rules. We agreed that the ghost would always make the best strategic move and wouldn't target any one person no matter what happened to it. The ghost won.

Saturday was our last day in Iowa. We had lunch with three of Nancy's sisters before they headed off to a baby shower and Nancy gave us early Christmas presents which were fantastic! I think Adam is getting the same thing so I don't want to say what it was, but all three of us were very happy. We had an uneventful drive back to Minneapolis and took Erin to Costco and Boston's once we arrived. Then she and Nick played Wii until they couldn't keep their eyes open any longer!

Today, today was one of my favorite days of the year: decorating the house for Christmas! Erin and I got out all the Christmas decorations and put them up, then we went to lunch at J. Cousineau's with Nick. The three of us headed over to get a tree after we were done eating.

I was standing innocently in the parking lot, looking at two trees and trying to decide if I should call Nick over to get his opinion on either one of them. All of a sudden, I was thumped on the head. My first thought was "man, that's pretty solid to be a Christmas tree!". Then Erin was rushing over and pulling a 2x4 off of me! It had a couple of nails sticking out of the end of it - luckily none of them got me. The 2x4 was about 20 feet long and had been standing up in the middle of one of the X-shaped Christmas tree holders. The holders are designed to hold four trees and this one only had two tiny ones in it. The 2x4s are used to hold up the overhead lights for when it is dark out. We threw the 2x4 on the ground and told the kids working the place what had happened. They're all just high school kids though and they were pretty freaked out. I am fine though - it only hurt for about five minutes and it happened seven hours ago so no problems. We ended up not getting either of those trees though!

Erin was able to help us get the tree set up in its stand and the lights on before Nick brought her back to the airport. She always complains that we get here there too early, so Nick purposely only got her there about an hour before she was scheduled to leave. However, she was delayed an hour in the airport and then stuck on the tarmac for another 2.5 because Georgia was too busy to accept her plane at its scheduled time. At least it wasn't completely our fault this time! When Nick got home we put up all the ornaments, made some pasta and settled in to watch SNF - the Patriots almostlost.

Now my house smells like the pine needles and ready to go. I love Christmas!