Traditionalists

True to form, my family spent this Thanksgiving doing what we do best -- cooking and laying around. My mom busted her ass getting all the food prepped, my dad accumulated so many grocery lists we probably ended up with more sticks of butter than any family needs, and my sisters and I soaked in the spoiling that comes with having the most awesome parents in the world.

Shout out to Mom & Dad: Me? Grateful for yous. ;)

Charles made his famous stuffed pumpkins!

Mom's Leek Stuffing beat out her Pumpkin Stuffing this year.

Yes, we managed to eat all of that.

Matty G. is officially a part of the Thanksgiving tradition.

Ben & Renee got to choose decorations for their table. A bear with a tiara, Sherriff Woody, and a light up Snoopy. Obviously.

Lots of Black Friday ambition, but guess how many of them actually went shopping?

Betsy managing to fall asleep in the middle of the living room floor? Another Thanksgiving tradition.

Renee had a really bad cough, one that sent me back in time to when I was five and would get a cough so awful I had to sleep sitting up, one that plagued me into my 10th year of my life when my mom was so exasperated at trying to contain it she finally taught me how to do a shot of Bourbon, one that followed me into my 20s that would wake Shannon up from sleeping in the next room and compel her to fix me some tea just to shut me up.

Renee did what I used to do when a coughing fit steals your breath -- cried. And it broke my heart. So I scooped up the little petri dish, rubbed her back, kissed her head, and tried my luck.

Lilly also had some disease, but hers involved faucet nostrils and chronic diarrhea. I hate snot, which is probably why her face is raw today. I was pretty diligent about washing my hands since 1) I already contracted the Vomit Disease of October from that little petri dish, and 2) I was playing soux chef for my mom.

Alas, those little contaminants got the best of me.

I managed to eat the Thanksgiving feast, complete with four pieces of pie (yeah, I came down with pie madness), and got to watch three episodes of Dexter before I was bombarded with Children Afflictions. When I say bombarded, that is no exaggeration. It was a sweaty-toilet-trash-can-combo kind of purging. It was so bad I cried.

On the bright side, I'm not feeling so guilty about those four pieces of pie now. I'd prefer not to have nature's bulimia, but if it's got to happen, Thanksgiving is a good one to bulim.

Thankfully, it only lasted a day, a day that I spent in a Phenergan-induced coma that made consciousness feel like swimming in sausage. By Saturday I was good as new, so Mack and I took his new remote control airplane to Jacobson Park to do loop de loops and soak up what was probably the last bit of sun we'll see until March.