our best yet...

as we headed to bed last nite, there was agreement between
us all - best thanksgiving ever. yep, absolutely best ever.

there were a couple things that coulda thrown me off. and
tried...but i'm learning. a lot. and i focused on the day,
and these guys i was with. and it was amazing.

sitting on the floor at one point, playin' some dumb game,
i looked at each one of 'em. i just went from face to face
to face. i remembered when they were small and thought of how
i'd never have guessed what they'd look like now or how they'd
be. i just looked at their manly faces and couldn't believe
these guys were my sons.

at some point, sitting on the couch with zakk, i wondered if
we'd even cook. we had pie and coffee and i was thinking we
may not get any further than that. i felt so lazy and good.
and what thrilled me about that was that if we did get lazy,
then we wouldn't cook. we had that option. i think just having
that option was one of the biggest gifts of the day.

life is always so full of obligations and time limits.
i'm forever watching the clock and figurin' out my minutes and
fulfilling my obligations. on this day, i had no idea what time
it was and the only thing we were sposed to do, i wasn't sure if
we would. and i smiled over that one.

we walked down to the river. just bein' out in the chilly air
was great. noah brought the camera so we could get a picture to
send out with christmas cards. this turned into great fun as
everyone tried to come up with original ideas for the shot.
the blooper pictures were the ones we were howlin' about later.

the chilly air worked up an appetite so we actually did cook.
all gathered in josh's kitchen, reachin' around each other,
listenin' to an amazingly weird range of music genres.

dinner was really good. can't tell if it was just delicious or
because no one had eaten much all day...but it was perfect.

after dinner it was more games...playing longer than we had thought
we would as we got swept up into it. zakk was giving hints to words
on a card he had, and we were racing to get them first...
at one point, again, i sat back and watched. there was so much
brother chemistry goin' on i had to watch it. their thought processes
worked together so amazingly that i was just intrigued.
'there's a family thing goin' on here' i thought and was taken
with the magic of it. as i hopped back in the game, i got one of
the words before zakk had even finished the clue.

'a dish....' he started
'MACARONI!' i shouted.

he completely stopped, looked at me with his eyes scrunched up
and said 'how'd you do that???'

i grinned.
hammed it up, of course, carried on in a dramatic way, of course.
cause that's what games are for...
but all nite i kept thinking of this family magic thing happening.

we finished it off with a movie at my house and more pie of course...
giving josh two hugs on his way out, we were all gathered sayin'
what a great day it had been...

our best yet.