Thanksgiving Meme

So, we've read This is the Feast by Diane Z.Shore. Now what? How about a meme!

What are FIVE things you're thankful for this year.
What are THREE things you're thankful for this month.
What is ONE thing you're thankful for this week.
What's your favorite Thanksgiving memory?
What's your least favorite Thanksgiving memory?
Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions you'd like to share?

I'll start. You can post your answers in the comments, or answer on your blog and leave a link.

What are FIVE things you're thankful for this year.

1. My family. My mom. My dad. My sister. My brother-in-law.
2. Snugglebug. Ladybug--his mama--and I have been friends for a little over ten years now. But 2008 saw the arrival of her first child.
3. Baby Lily. The *newest* baby in my life. Just two weeks old. Cute as can be. I've already given her a book. She's got two big sisters.
4. My best-good-buddy Julie.
5. My bloggy friends.

What are THREE things you're thankful for this month.

1. I'm getting together with Ladybug and Snugglebug this week!
2. I'm having a birthday later this month.
3. The arrival of an Amazon package (cross your fingers!) hopefully.

What is ONE thing you're thankful for this week.

1. I got to hold Baby Lily.


What's your favorite Thanksgiving memory?

There are several stories I could share. Most of them funny. Or at least funny to me.

We used to spend Thanksgiving with my dad's side of the family--my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my great aunts and great-uncles with a mix of cousins. My Grandma was always the one to say the prayer before the meal. Nothing funny about that...yet. One year, when our family was having car trouble and we needed rides to school every morning for a week maybe two weeks, Grandma was there to give us a lift. She'd say a prayer EVERY time we crossed a railroad track, EVERY time we crossed an intersection (be it traffic lights or stop signs), etc. So that Thanksgiving, when it was time for prayer, I couldn't help but noticing that it was the exact same prayer--mostly--for the turkey dinner. Anyway, it was giggle causing to me at least.

Another funny incident involves a dog and my great-aunt. For many years my sister and I were the youngest. We were the "cute" ones, the attention getters. By the time I was in junior high, however, we'd been replaced. By a dog. My cousin's boyfriend had a cute dog...just adorable. And my other cousin was dating a girl with a baby. Anyway, my great aunt thinking that she was loving on the baby's toy--a stuffed animal--was hugging and kissing and holding it near her face, making a great to-do about it etc. Until...someone pointed out that it was the dog's chew toy.

Yet another story. This time many years later...we're all adults now. My great-aunt was packing the food up. She was trying to get people to take food home. She was really having a tough time pushing the turkey. No one wanted to take any home. She was calling out name by name by name. There were just no takers. Finally she said, anybody want to take turkey home to feed their dogs? Anyway, I *thought* it was funny. I think there were finally some takers then.

My most interesting Thanksgiving moment might have been when I was seated between my great-grandmother and my great-great aunt. Both were deaf. Both wanted to talk to the other.

One of my favorite Thanksgivings came at the end of one of my favorite weeks. 1995. I was a Senior in high school. That week saw the premiere of The Beatles Anthology--three nights on TV--and the release of the Beatles Anthology album. (Not to mention the release of DC Talk's Jesus Freak album.) My local PBS station played both HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP that week. I went from barely, barely knowing who the Beatles were...to being a complete Beatle maniac. I remember going to KMart on Thanksgiving and buying the HELP album for my birthday. PLEASE PLEASE ME for my sister for Christmas. (Tacky I know to give her something I wanted for myself.) And dad picked out the WHITE ALBUM for himself for Christmas. Fun times. The only bittersweet thing about that week was the loss of Sergei Grinkov, the iceskater--husband and partner of Ekaterina Gordeeva.


What's your least favorite Thanksgiving memory?

My *least* favorite Thanksgiving is easy. It was in 2005. My great-aunt (Dina Rose) had died the night before. Well, really she had died several weeks before but she'd been put on life support. So I guess she was still "alive" by some accounts. And earlier--I can't remember if it was October or November--either the phone company or the electric company had been out on one of the roads by our house digging up lines. They'd supposedly "inadvertantly" cut our fence line--we have cows--the whole stretch of the road along our property. They didn't want to take responsibility of course. And they didn't want to fix it or pay someone to fix it. Anyway, so we'd had to have all our cows penned up for several weeks. Thanksgiving was the ONLY day Dad had off from work. So he and my mom spent essentially from sun-up to sun-down repairing the fence. I suppose it could have been worse if I'd had to gone with them to help. But spending all day in the house, by myself, with little on TV and little to eat--running low on groceries on the "good" stuff anyway--was NOT fun at all. No family. No friends. No good food. No pie.

Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions you'd like to share?

Back when we did a big meal--cooking turkey and dressing and the works--I liked to help mom with *some* of it. Not all of it. It was my job to taste-test the dressing to make sure it was right before she added the eggs to it. And it was my job to lay out the marshmellows for the sweet potatoes. We haven't cooked the last four or five years. So I don't have any special traditions necessarily.

For other stops on the tour visit:

the 160acrewoods, A Mom Speaks, All About Children’s Books, Becky’s Book Reviews, Cafe of Dreams, Dolce Bellezza, Homeschool Buzz, KidzBookBuzz.com, Looking Glass Reviews, Maggie Reads,Maw Books Blog, Never Jam Today, Our Big Earth, Quiverfull Family, Reading is My Superpower, SmallWorld Reads

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