Happy Thanksgiving

Today, we celebrated our first thanksgiving together. Thanksgiving traditionally marks the beginning of the winter "holiday season," and both of us had holidays, last year, about which I think I'm right in saying that we'd both rather forget they happened. Since meeting and after all that's happened from that time forth, we've been very much looking forward to this time of year. It's about time!

One of the things we decided to do, this Thanksgiving, was to deep-fry our turkey. We had heard that turkeys prepared this way were particularly delicious. Never having done this previously, I was a little worried about getting myself killed, but I decided to be brave and go forward and onward anyway. I defy death by boiling cooking oil. Besides, we had already purchased the deep-fryer kit, so who was I to argue? All I could think to myself was, "do we have enough deli meat in case I mess this up and we have to substitute sandwiches for this thing?"

Always at the ready, Bob had his camera prepared to shoot video of this momentous occasion (me lowering the turkey into the boiling cauldron and, potentially, having my face seared off). This would have provided evidence in the case of an investigation by authorities surrounding any disfigurement I might have suffered -- Evette would have been off-the-hook.

I was called to lead the group in a pre-meal prayer, which is something I have never been charged with doing, so I kinda had to do it on the fly. I'm not terribly skilled there and I don't know what to say, so I winged it, and as I was trying to continue, Kayla piped up, saying "JUST SAY 'AMEN'!" I'm glad I had the youngest member of the clan there to help me wrap it all up and give me some direction. I'd have probably done just as well to say, "Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat!"

Anyhow, the turkey, one hour later, was absolutely delicious! Unfortunately, only one individual present, Sasha, didn't get to taste it in the quantities that everyone else did! And there was plenty! Poor puppy! She did get some turkey love, though. I wouldn't have let her go without.

After we all stuffed ourselves, it was game time. I was told, early on, that I would be officially inducted into the Cribbage players' union by Bob. It's actually a fun game! I did like it. It took me a little bit of time to get the hang of things (the point system takes just a little bit of memorization, and the combinations that get you those points can be a little tricky, especially when you're counting them against the other cards that people throw -- and you're more mentally aligned with poker), but I managed to impress him with my budding strategies.

Kayla led the charge through Sorry! and Uno, but unfortunately, Sasha was still saying "Sorry!" to her. Sasha is still skittish around children, and although we're not 100% sure why, we couldn't have Sasha threatening Kayla, so to the crate she went. It broke my heart that Sasha couldn't behave like a civilized girl, but I guess she has some kind of instinctive urge here. When she starts speaking English, I'll ask her about it.

Mama and Bob spent the night, and Bob found himself somewhat enthralled with the movie, "Eight Below," while mama slept on the floor on a makeshift bed of couch pillows. Eventually, all got tucked in and called it a night -- not before Evette and I exchanged Thanksgiving cards, though. They both carried beautiful messages of how thankful we are for each other. God knows I am.

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