Thanksgiving!!!

I'm back from a little writing hiatus to enjoy the holidays!  We spent Thanksgiving with the whole (well almost whole) Stillwagon crew up in Habersham.  Originally, I thought it would be really hard to spend Thanksgiving at the mountain house (aka the house I grew up in).  And it was, but it was also just overwhelmingly fun and special.  It was always just me and my parents sitting around the table growing up.  There were a few Thanksgivings where a grandparent or friend would come over, but for the most part it was just the three of us.  My mom would cook everything, and my dad and I would eat everything.  I would always insist on using the china and crystal (which meant I had to wash it all b/c my mom refused to use anything that wouldn't go in the dishwasher), and this year we used that same china.  You could argue there were only a few similarities between my Thanksgivings growing up and this past one.  Those similiarities would be the china we dined on, a plethora of good food, and an overwhelming sense of love.  I'm pretty sure those three things (okay, the two things - the china isn't really important) are the only things that matter on Thanksgiving.  From the outside looking in, there's a huge difference between a little wooden table with three people around it, and two full tables with 12 people talking and laughing, but to me there was no real difference.  I was surrounded by people I loved.

This year we had all sorts of things going on.  We cooked, we ate, we crafted, we participated in the Thanksgiving Olympics, ate some more, the men built railings while we chatted, we ate again, zip lined, watched football, and played lots of Scattegories while we ate some more.  It was a really fun time.  Bryan took lots of great pictures as well.  Here are a few:

 Family time before the eating began.

 We had two turkeys....and they were both delicious!! 

 Grandma Stillwagon looking beautiful as always. 

 Mia and Bailey were literally drooling over the smell of turkey.  Can't say I blamed them.

This was the redneck portion of the day - which I dubbed the Thanksgiving Olympics.  Jessica's science project was to test the effects of caffeine on the heart rate. She measured off 40 yards (on the road no less) and we ran it, took our heart rate, chugged a caffeinated beverage and ran again.  The results were that your heart rate does in fact go up (and you laugh non-stop at a bunch of rednecks running up and down the road). 

 Friday morning Bryan and his dad went on an early morning photography expedition.  They got some great pictures, but be warned: that waterfall is very slippery.  Bryan can tell you all about it.  He slid most of the way down.  Thankfully he only has a few scrapes and bruises to show for it (and some really cool pictures).  

 We also went zip lining!  Let me correct that - the zip lining place could only take 9 people, so me, Bryan, and his grandma stayed behind to take pictures.  Bryan and I had done it before so we wanted everyone else to have the experience.  They had a blast, and we had fun watching them at the places where we could meet up.

Gentlemen - she's single and ready to mingle.  That would be Amy, not Jessica. :) Sorry Amy for trying to set you up with the zip lining tour guides.  Actually, I'm not sorry - it was fun! 

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your families!!  We're decorating for Christmas now.  It is the most wonderful time of the year after all. :)

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