10 on the Tenth

In joining Meredith's 10 on the Tenth this month, I'm listing 10 Thanksgiving memories:

1. We lived away from family for most of my growing-up years, but I know we spent at least one Thanksgiving in Fort Smith with my Mom's family. Maw and Papa had a small house, but it did have a formal dining room which the adults ate in, while we kids crowded around the little square table in the kitchen. We LOVED this arrangement, mostly because Maw put a candle on the table and my cousin Buddy impressed me and set an example for my big brothers by swiping his finger through the flame and holding his hand over it.
That is also the year I made my first pecan pie, made famous by this picture.

The pie was either tough or the pecans had some shells left on--in the home movie, chewing it looks painful.(Disclaimer: whether this is an actual memory or a home-movie induced memory, I do not know. Or care!)

2. The next Thanksgiving I remember was when we lived in Virginia. The families we lived near and went to church and school with became our aunts and uncles and cousins, and whover couldn't go "home" for holidays would get together. We had some great times!

This picture is actually Easter, but Thanksgiving would have been the same people. Can you find me?

3. When I was in the 8th grade, we moved from San Diego "back" to Arkansas, and our first Thanksgiving there is one of my very favorite memories. I had to go to school for half a day the Wednesday before (today's kids are so spoiled!) and can you imagine how excited I was, after 3 years of sunny California, when we saw SNOW begin to fall? We ran to the windows to watch, and our teachers didn't even care. My mom's family was coming over, and we didn't tell them  it was snowing because we didn't want them to cancel. They made it fine, but it snowed so much that our power went out! Which at that time controlled our heat, oven, and even our water, since we had a well. A house full of people who couldn't flush! My Aunt Melody and Mom wrapped our turkey in foil and stuck it in our wood-burning stove to bake--but the electricity came on in time to finish it in the oven. By the time the snow stopped we had at least 6 inches. I'll never forget that year!

4. After Mike and I got married, we started taking turns spending Thanksgiving/Christmas with each of our families. My Texas Thanksgiving memories include walking and riding the tractor around his parents' land outside of Smithville, playing with my new nephews and nieces, and watching with morbid fascination as they put hard-boiled eggs in the dressing.

5. We also had to watch a certain football game with Mike's longhorn-fan-brother, Jeff. The rivalry was, of course, all in fun and love. Mostly. Sometimes. Once we drove to Austin to watch it with Jeff and his in-laws, and had to drive back through a horrible ice storm--I've never seen so many upside-down and stranded cars.

6. Our first Thanksgiving spent in Idaho was bittersweet. Of course we both wanted all our traditional family dishes, which was a lot of food for the 2 of us. So we always ended up inviting a few students over to share it with us. Our first 4 years there we were Mission Service Corps volunteers, which means we raised our own support. For 2 years we lived in the upstairs half of a duplex, with a crazy woman downstairs. When our church left us a turkey and bag of food on our doorstep, we decided to give the turkey to her, since we already had one. You can imagine how shocked we were when the landlord called and told us she had accused us of stealing her food bag!

7. I called my Mom that year to get her "recipe" for dressing, only to discover there was no recipe. She told me how to make it the best she could without me being beside her watching. But when it came to the sage, I asked her how much to put in and she said (at least I heard), "Oh, a couple of tablespoons." When I was putting it all together I held up the little jar of sage I had bought and thought, 'That looks like a couple of tablespoons," and put in the whole, entire jar. Oh, yes, I did. Our dressing that year was dark, forest green!! It was hilarious.

8. Those years in Idaho are when we started the tradition of decorating our artificial tree the day after Thanksgiving. IF we weren't skiing at Silver Mountain, that is!! (I do miss skiing.)

9. The next memory that stands out to me is the next Thanksgiving we spent in Arkansas with my family...2 1/2 weeks after my father died. We had flown down for the funeral, not knowing how long we would stay. We thought it would help everyone if we just stayed until after Thanksgiving, and Mike's boss (we had a paying position by then) said that was fine. It's strange, but even the photographs I took of that time are dark. It was also our first Thanksgiving without my brother's first wife, who had been in our family for 20 years. Needless to say, we were all in a lot of pain. But we held on to each other and to our Lord, and even found things to be thankful for. My 2 babies, ages 3 and 1, were an especially bright spot to me. I love this picture of Mikayla when Mark pulled her tights down over her face and she ran around making everyone laugh.

10. When we moved back to Arkansas, we got to start alternating holidays with family again, and it's been so nice. This year my Mom is coming to our house, and we're looking forward to making new memories.