Thanksgiving travel, Grandma and Grandpa

I remember getting a lot accomplished while I was off before Thanksgiving, but it is pretty much a blur now. I did get the lambs to the processor – and that took a lot of time because of the wait for them to offload the lambs while they were checking in deer that needed to be processed. I got feed on my way home since I was in Muenster anyway. I finally took the time to learn how to use my wire welder. I have had it in the shop for over a year but could not seem to get the hang of it when I tried to use it but I fought though the frustration and got it working for me so I can now use it when needed. I got the wood lathe fully set up in the shop and practiced some with it as I got everything on it adjusted properly. I cleaned out the goat barn putting the straw and refuse from that building in the coop lots and the pig lot. That provided hours of fun for both the chickens and the pig. There were other little items I caught up on like cleaning and organizing the garage so were not so cluttered there and pruning the bushes and trees , cutting back the fig tree to a single identifiable tree to encourage it to produce figs. In doing that I got twelve other fig trees in the process which were planted in a variety of locations around the fence and in the garden. One or two of them should do well. It was a fun and productive time off.

Wednesday I spent the majority of the day cooking. I fired up the pellet grill at 7 am and had the turkey on the grill at 7:30. I split the turkey down the middle so we could take half of it with us to Brittany’s and keep the other half for a future meal here. That worked out very well. We had plenty of meat at our Thanksgiving meal. At the same time the turkey as on the smoker, I put a smaller turkey on the rotisserie. That was going to the Chinese for their Thanksgiving meal. I also prepared a ham for them. Those were delivered to them late on Wednesday evening. It worked out well because we had our mid-week church service on Tuesday evening. After the cooking was done, we started our final packing for the trip to Brittany’s.

We left the farm about 8 am Thursday morning and got to Brittany and Andrew’s about 1:30 that afternoon. It was an easy, uneventful trip. However, we did stop for a potty break and found a family at the rest area in Kansas sitting outside the building with all their belongings – a caged Labrador included. They had been in a car accident and were waiting for family to come and get them. All of them were dressed in their pajamas. The father was in a Grinch pajama set. Not the best choice of attire for travel, but it should make a memorable event for them as a family. Mama prayed with them before we continued on our way. We saw two other wrecks on the way there but were not affected by either of those.

Needless to say, the girls were excited to see us when they got up from their nap. It took Audrey a bit to warm up to me. It was my first time meeting her. She did not particularly like me with a hat but was even more alarmed by my bald head. So, eventually we settled on wearing the hat. Zoe and Sophia wallowed us the whole time we were there. I was impressed by their mastery of the alphabet. Mama and I got out our phones and were doing our Wordscapes puzzle – as we do daily – and the twins were able to spell the words for us as we told them what letters to select. Once they got the hang of dragging their finger over the letters without lifting it, they completed one puzzle after another…until Mama and I tired of the game.

We had a wonderful meal for Thanksgiving. Snacks and finger foods prior to the meal. Smoked turkey, dressing, a sweet potato and mashed potato combined dish Mama had found a recipe for, ham, cranberry sauce made from fresh cranberries, which all the girls loved, cream style corn, and green bean casserole. Pecan and pumpkin pies were offered afterwards but I had to pass on those until the next day. Good food. Good company. It was an unexpectedly good Thanksgiving since this trip was fairly spontaneous. We had originally planned on spending Thanksgiving with our Chinese family. That would have been fun, but this was much better.

Brittany and Andrew spent the night away from the kids for the first time in months as Mama, Victoria and I watched the girls for the night Friday night. We had a great time with the girls, and they had a great time away. A win-win. We left about 1:30 pm Saturday afternoon, arriving at the farm a little before 7 pm. A fun weekend but it was nice to get home.

Grandma and Grandpa had watched the farm for us in our absence. There were a couple issues but nothing serious. Friday afternoon the pig got out of her pen, but Grandpa was able to easily get her back into the enclosure. She was not happy but complied. Saturday afternoon, the dogs got out. We figure Grandma left them out for long periods of time and they got a passage dug under the fence to explore outside of the yard. They eventually came back filthy and covered in burrs. It was a mess we had to clean up once we got home. That has not happened in a long time, but I took down the electric fence a few weeks back which allowed the dogs access to the chain link fence. They have a favorite place to excavate when they have access to it. At any rate, everything was back to “normal” when we arrived.

Sunday was great. Great services, great fellowship. A great holiday weekend.