T-Day Bliss

Some of  My Fantastic Family at the Table Yesterday

Yesterday was about as much fun as is legal because of the fantastic people I was blessed to spend the day with, on yeah and Buddy too.  My wife, daughter and son in law joined me for the ride up to New Hampshire for our annual Thanksgiving Day gathering of my father’s family.  This is a tradition that’s into its sixth decade at a variety of locations but for the last decade has been in Hancock, NH.  A favorite saying of mine is, “There’s something special about cousins.”  That was certainly on display yesterday as we quickly dove into a pool of waiting relatives on a fantastic fall day.

Another one of the traditions is dogs.  My father’s family are dog lovers much to the chagrin of my feline oriented daughter, but there it is.  Buddy immediately joined the milling pack of dogs and with the exception of a pesky West Virginia mountain dog they all got along great.  Buddy wanted to spend a little more time attempting to scale the kitchen counters but spent most of the day admiring the repast from the deck although he did infiltrate and scored a glancing lick on a doomed pumpkin pie.   He even took an unexpected swim in a nearby brook which he handled with a surprised proficiency.  He looked back at us like, come on I’m a Lab – that was nothing.

My son and Most Excellent Girlfriend joined us after being a trifle mis-oriented geographically due to faulty Google map information (provided by me – you’re welcome).  This family gathering had to be a little intimidating but the MEG handled the stream of new people with her usual grace and aplomb.  The final count of relatives and various and sundry associates stood at around forty which is a lot for the house but it worked, as it always seems to.

The big event of the day is the annual family football game which is a lot of people running around with a mild connection to the actual rules.  It is so much fun and Buddy was charging around the field enjoying the freedom to explore without restriction.  He didn’t even blind side my son which is an opportunity he rarely misses out on.  My wife and daughter enjoyed the game from their usual heated box seats in the family car parked on the side lines.  It turns out the MEG is a fantastic football player and I threw a touchdown pass to her which she handled like a pro – a keeper I think.  I’m not sure how many more of these games I’ll be able to participate in because in my late fifties now – everything hurts after the game.  Who am I kidding, I plan on playing into my seventies!

One of the traditions for our family Thanksgivings when I was young at the end of the day was to sit around and see a slide show (actual slides) or home movies about what the family had been up to over the preceding year.  We revived that tradition yesterday when I showed the home movies I had converted to DVD.  It starred some of the people present back in the late 1950s.  For some reason it made me feel closer to my Dad, a fleeting but welcome feeling.

We journeyed home through the autumn night contented and more than a little sore (actually that was just me). We settled in to watch the Patriots battle the hated New York Jets and they provided the perfect end to a near perfect day by absolutely drilling their hated foes.  The Jets were doing their usual posturing but the Patriots outplayed them in all facets of the game and destroyed what vestige of self-respect that team could have felt.  We were high fiving each other after each Patriots touchdown but they were coming so fast that we couldn’t keep up.  One of my daughter’s friends was at the game and she was texting back to my daughter about how much fun it was to see the surly Jets fans suffer so thoroughly.  A good day, INDEED!

The Younguns Table , MEG, Son, Son in Law & Daughter

Buddy and Some of His Packmates Sentenced to the Deck

Daughter and MEG

The Game

Son, MEG, and Son in Law Preparing to do Battle

Hee, Hee, Hee

Couldn't Happen to a More Appropriate Bunch of Blowhards