Our First Thanksgiving

You can say that today was our first Thanksgiving. Sarah's "first" Thanksgiving and walking around my Grandparents' place like there's no tomorrow. And of course, our first Thanksgiving without Mom. Or rather, with Angel Mama.

Wednesday early morning, we started the drive to my Grandparents. The drive was nothing too crazy, just a long drive and we only stopped once. Dad and I got some Whataburger before heading back on the road again.

We got to Grandparents' place late Wednesday afternoon. Before we went out to dinner, Dad, Sarah, and I went out and visited Mom. We brought her flowers, gave her some cards, left her a Whataburger napkin (because we both know how much Mom loves Whataburger) and talked. We told her how much we all miss her and told her how we are doing. Sarah sat near her grave maker as if sitting on Mom's lap. We talked, we smiled, and cried.

Grandma brought a lot of food this Thanksgiving because we were expecting not only family, but friends at the same time. Aside from family, we were expecting 3 other families. So trust me, Grandma went all out. She brought 2-30lb turkeys, 2-20lb ham, and made 6 pies (though one was said to be our taste test pies, so we finished one pie last night)

Today, I had a chance to head out and said hi to Airborne. He was still the good horse I remembered and he sure love 'em sugar cubes I kept giving him. I could tell he wanted to go for a ride but weather just didn't permit this time. Sorry, Airborne, we'll ride next time. We spend the most day away from the kitchen (orders from Grandma) and spend time with family playing Wii and PS3 and watched football.

And the dinner? Let's just say that I am more than stuffed.
We spend rest of the night eating, talking, and just enjoying the time we have as family. We talked about anything and everything. Including Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and so on. It was a mix of great food, family, and friends. Definitely good way to spend Thanksgiving.

After people left Grandparents' place and the clean up process. We sat in the lounge, enjoyed some coffee and talked more. We talked about those deployed and how they love their pies and turkey. We talked about what happened at previous Thanksgivings and of course, we talked about the ones we lost. We shared their memories and their laughs, we kept their memory alive.

We found things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and not only for Thanksgiving, for rest of our lives.

Happy Thanksgiving, Mama.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.