Throwback Thursday #60: Thanksgiving 2011

“I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry.” ~Cat Stevens

Well I'm only a month and a half and two holidays later, but I'm finally getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving. As we do every year, we had my mom's entire family at our house for a huge Thanksgiving celebration. Think 30 loud, sorta crazy people all in one place eating enough food for 300. That's the mental picture you need.

The celebration started off with a little shooting practice. Why? Because we're totally redneck apparently. Last year we did a little shooting before most of the family arrived and, in doing so, apparently started a family tradition. No one discussed bringing guns or anything, but apparently everyone had packed one (more more) with them in the cars. We all piled out to the field behind the house and this was the scene. My favorite part was when a couple of neighbors drove by.....and just waived like everything was perfectly normal.

After shooting we all headed out for dinner. The restaurant has learned after several years of this to put us all in a back room for the sake of the other customers. The kids did the cracker challenge (they say it's impossible to eat 6 Saltines in 1 minute) and Baby Cousin was about 2 seconds from making history. Of course, I kept thinking I wasn't sure what we did if he made that history----who do you call in that situation?
The next day the wind was blowing literally 60 miles an hour and it was miserable. That means that all 30 of the crazy people were jammed in one house. Yea. We had to get creative.
We ended the day with a little game of baseball. Listen, folks, you don't have a family member who was drafted by the San Francisco Giants and not play some baseball. Mostly I played catcher. I mean, someone had to tell the pro what pitch to throw. I did, however, bat once. And get a hit. Off of a major league pitcher. (Ignore that it was with a padded bat and foam ball.) Thank you, thank you.
Family Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Nothing like getting all of the family together in one place and stuffing our faces full of food. It doesn't get much better than that! And I'm particularly nostalgic about 2011's gathering. We had no idea at the time, but it would be the last one with us all together; the last one with Uncle David (he'd be the guy front and center). Something like that happens, and you appreciate family traditions and time spent together so much more.