Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was spent at the House of Hines. It was a lot of fun and Dani has chosen me to sum up the activities because it has been awhile since I posted. We left Wednesday afternoon despite the warnings and blizzard conditions that had been present the day before. We were fearless and brave as we entered the eye of the storm. The picture to the right shows the conditions we faced (there is a road in that picture somewhere). It was 35 MPH all the way to Blackfoot and that was whether we wanted to or not, it was bumper to bumper the whole way. Along our cold and slow travels we came across this truck and these two dogs. It had to be in the teens temperature-wise let alone the wind and these poor guys were riding in the back of this truck on the freeway. I swear the one on top of the hay bale was looking to jump. He'd had enough and we couldn't blame him.
 
The rest of the trip was good until right where I-86 and I-84 meet. Then we had to funnel all of the holiday traffic into one lane and we faced more bumper to bumper traffic.We felt bad for the car in front of us. You could tell that the trip was getting long for them  too because the  woman in the passenger seat, I assume the mother, kept reaching back to the  little waving hands we could see poking out of a car-seat every 10 minutes...then 5 minutes...then 2 minutes...after that they took the next exit and were out of there. Hopefully their holiday turned out  ok. As for child-less us, we made it safely and enjoyed the peaceful four-hour drive while listening to Christmas music. On Thanksgiving morning a few of us went to run in the Turkey Trot. Afterwords all of the family had arrived and we were ready for the feast. All of the family was there except for the Petersen's who were missed, but they kindly made us the place-holders as scene on our table prepped for the feast.

After the meal we played games, talked, and had various desserts. Here is a particularly, shall we say, well endowed, candy turkey that was a part of the meal.

We had planned on having smoked turkey as a part of the lunch but, this being our first attempt at said smoked bird, it took quite a bit longer than planned. However, it turned out to be a perfect dinner, after about seven long hours of smoking we were treated to a wonderfully cooked turkey that was devoured in about 15 minutes.

After all that we decided to stay up and brave the midnight sales at Wal-Mart. It wasn't so bad for the wife and me. We started out by the towels and sheets; when the sale was official we had nice ladies searching through the pile shouting, "I have a king-size set in red," then someone would step up and get what they needed and move on. It was all very civil and if we did get pushed over we were guaranteed a soft landing of pillows, sheets, and comforters. My two sisters were not so lucky and started out by the DVD's. Needless to say there was some pushing, groping, odd smells, and general barbaricness that would accompany such a gathering. By the time we had all gathered our stuff and waited in line to check out for 30 minutes everyone was ready to go home. Here is a picture of the ladies smiling with our cart full of deals despite the nights events.

The holiday was a lot of fun and it was good to spend time with family. Thankfully the road back home was much clearer and only took the standard two hours rather than the four it took on the way down.