11/23/12

I haven't done an update in a few days due to the Thanksgiving holiday, so I thought it was time I caught up.

On Wednesday, at lunchtime, I went out and cleaned out the car in preparation for our Thanksgiving travel. After work I loaded the car, which involved carrying out several loads of Christmas presents and figuring out how to stack them to maximize space. We like to take as many Christmas gifts as possible with us when we visit family on Thanksgiving, in case we need to drive the truck when we go for Christmas due to the weather. Andrea has most of the gifts made or bought, so we had a car load to take in.

Thursday morning we got up early and headed out. We were reminded how difficult it is to find somewhere to eat on Thanksgiving morning in and around the small town where we live. We finally stopped at a gas station, about 7 miles out of town, that has a restaurant that was open. We had never eaten there before, but likely will go back sometime to try out their lunch. We had two Thanksgiving meals to attend, one at my grandmother's, then another, later in the day, at my mother-in-law's.

My other grandmother had cooked on Thanksgiving, but also cooked a small meal on Friday, so we went to visit with that side of the family and had lunch on Friday with them. After eating and catching up with family for a bit, we headed home. We had several stops to make along the way, and didn't want to be too late getting back here.

Two years ago, my dad was in the hospital for several weeks, so we spent a lot of time either at the hospital or staying at my parents house. We saved all of our plastic bottles, with the intentions of recycling them. I had forgotten about them, until a couple of days ago when my Mom reminded me, and said they were in the downstairs closet. On our way home we made a detour through London so we could drop the bottles off at the recycling center. I had to take the lids off of each, so counted them as a I did, out of curiosity. There were a total of 89 bottles, made up mostly of 20oz, with a few 32oz bottles mixed in.

While in London we grabbed something to eat and stopped in a few stores to check out their Black Friday sales. We only bought something from one store, where we picked up a set of clamps, that may be a Christmas gift to me, a tape measure, and 40lb of bird seed.

When we got home, Luke and Jack met us at the bottom of the driveway. They normally wait until we start up the driveway, and meet us about half way up. I think they were happier than normal to see us this time, probably because they were hungry. We were both tired and ready to relax, so didn't even carry in everything from the car. The only things we brought in was one piece of luggage and a couple of bags with frozen meat and bones that had been sent for the dogs. My parents sent some leg bones from a deer they had butchered, and my grandmother sent several pieces, that she had apparently been saving for some time. I need to finish carrying everything in today, especially the two boxes of canned deer meat that my parents sent, which they've had on hand for several years, and finally admitted they aren't going to eat. I might suggest that we save the canned meat as a backup in case we run out of food for the dogs this winter because of weather.