Thanksgiving Epilogue

I shared a nice Thanksgiving with my brothers, my niece, my dad and a couple of his friends. We had a nice spread (mostly catered by takeout from Cracker Barrel) of ham, sliced turkey breast with gravy, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, carrots, green bean casserole with crunchy onions on top, cranberry sauce, green salad, cornbread, biscuits, pumpkin pie and lemon meringue pie. I washed mine down with Coke Zero, although the brothers brought along a 12-pack of some micro-brew beer that turned out to be an 11-pack, since one of the bottles was broken and empty.

Here are a few pictures. First, a postprandial group shot of everyone except for my dad: Kurt, Rachel, Clyde, Jeanette, Richard and Karl.



Next, one of Dad and the boys:



Here's one of Rachel and Kurt:



And, finally, one more of just the guys:



My t-shirt is one from my high school, Shawnee Mission North, which both of my brothers also attended and where Rachel is a senior this year. I got it in 1998 at my 20th high school reunion. Kurt tells me that while SMN is still the Indians (the shirt has a big Indian on the back), they use the more politically correct logo on the front of the shirt as the official logo these days. They don't want to "offend" anyone.

Needless to say, nobody went hungry. I blame the tryptophan for what happened later. I said my goodbyes around 3:30 and headed for home to get some sleep, since I had to get up for work at 8:30. Well, I was supposed to get up at that time. In my groggy state, I thought I was hitting the snooze alarm, but I ended up turning the alarm off. I woke up at 10:25, already 25 minutes late for work. I tried to call the office to tell them I was coming in, but nobody would answer the stupid phone, so I just drove on in and called them from a traffic light about 15 minutes before I got there. Oh, well: Shit happens.

Anyway, now it's the weekend, my brothers and niece have returned home, and I'm finally getting caught up on my sleep. It was great having them down here, though. I wish that I could see them more often, but the distances are great.