Family, Friends, Feasting, and Forced Labor

This Thanksgiving we drove to Richmond to celebrate the holiday with my family. We left as early as we could get packed up on Wednesday and, two cats in tow, made the 4 hour trip in reasonable time. We were out early enough to miss most of the horrible traffic, though it seemed that those on the road were trying to make up for that fact by driving like idiots. Once there, the cats all got along well (Diana took a few days to actually come out of our bedroom), but in the end everyone learned to play and sleep in the same room, if not exactly "together".

Wednesday night, Brandy came over and Erin got in to town and we opened up a package of beading supplies I had ordered. We went through some of my dad's mother's jewelry and restrung, repaired, and reused beads and components to make some up-to-date additions for all our jewelry boxes. My grandmother had gotten into beading before her passing, and there were even some great strings of "never been strung" gemstone beads that we shared around. It was very cool.

Thursday was rainy. Because Brandy had to work that afternoon and couldn't be there for dinner, we figured that was excuse enough to have 2 Thanksgiving feasts. I mean, what else are you supposed to do?! So we had a huge spread for Thanksgiving breakfast and repeated the process for dinner that night. :) It was great. Some friends of my mom and dad came over with their son and we gorged on all sorts of yumminess.

On Friday morning, for the first time in years, Brandy was able to join us for the annual American hajj to the mecca that is a shopping mall. It worked out even better because she recently moved to an apartment adjoining the shopping center of our choice. So we had a place to go back to and have breakfast, regroup, bandage our wounds and such. Very cool. We managed to get in and out of several stores on our lists and scored some GREAT deals. There's nothing like being drug out of bed at an ungodly hour by a screaming alarm clock and then driving through traffic and wading through brawls of soccer moms for the chance to wait in that far too long of a line with the holy grail that is that perfect Christmas gift (on sale for half price) to put me in the Christmas Season Mood. I like to think of it as doing my part to relive the trek of the Maji. It seems like it takes 2 years of traveling in a slow line, following the yonder star...or is that the light over the check out ringers' aisle? Either way, once the morning sleep gets out of my eyes and I have some good breakfast, I have acquired gifts that need to be wrapped. And the wrapping DOES put me in a good mood.

After the morning activities, we came back to my parents' house, at which point I laid down for a nap. That 2-year trek took a lot out of me. And all the stores seemed plum out of camels to help carry my load. After the nap, Brett and I headed outside to help my dad on the deck. My dad has been building a new deck on the back of their house for several months. The time it has taken is in no way indicitive of his motivation. He's just doing it by himself and it's hard to do even the simple tasks (measuring, screwing, etc) without someone else there to hold up the other end of the board. He had all the beams and posts secured, so we got out there that afternoon and got the joists for the upper level put up.

It was hard work, but we had a great time (and it didn't hurt to at least attempt to work off some of our two feasts from the day before). The next day we stayed later than we had originally anticipated so that we could get the lower level joists up as well. It has all the makings of a deck now!