Tuesday, December 9

full of thankfulness!

A day of Thanksgiving - well can it be with so much preparation involved? Yes, it can, if you do everything with a spirit of thankfulness. With as many trips as we had made to the store over the last few days, I was thankful we had everything we needed for the meal. The turkey was thawed and I got up early to finish the stuffing, stuff the bird, and put him in the oven. Then I could rest for a couple of hours - the remainder wouldn't take long. It was nice to be surrounded by helping hands of loved ones just happy to be sharing space and time together. We even had a chance to talk to Troy, their cousin, our nephew, and few other loved ones.

The meal was completed with sweet potatoes (started the night before), green beans, greens, fried corn, macaroni and cheese, dinner rolls, cranberry sauce, gravy, sparkling and mulled cider. We served our plates and sat down at the table blessing the food, each of us speaking to what we were thankful for. An dutch apple pie baked in the oven, which we ate as room became available in our tummys. We had such a lovely time this last full day of our time away. We were in the midst of the beauty of God's earth.

It seems when we take these trips we come across unusual programming. Here we saw several episodes of Dirty Jobs, another Discovery channel offering. We saw snake habitats and crocodile habitats cleaned; clams shucked or whatever you call it and more. The shows we get hooked in - oh my!

We began the packing process; who was it we were taking back as much as we brought? Check out was 10 a.m. but us Norman's had a long drive ahead; we were hoping to be home by midnight. The Rodriguezes had a bit of a drive themselves. The next day we packed up the cars and headed on out, leaving our not so Ruidoso Camelot with Crown drive above. We stopped for breakfast at the local Denny's and then went our separate ways. They would stop in the Roswell (their pics) area on their way back to Texas.

We pretty much drove straight home. Having parcelled off all of the leftovers including the carcass for soup, all of us had turkey sandwiches for the road and snacks handy. The hubbi started off the drive and took us all the way into Arizona once again. He likes to collect caps, so we stopped in two Love's to add to his collection. As we left we saw the hill with the cross on top of it commemorating the Battle of Round Mountain. We saw some of the places we missed on White Sands day, and stopped by Eagle Ranch and a local road stop for my souvenoirs.

The skies seemed emotionally clouded at our departure, even shedding a few tears of rain along our way; yet there was a rosy glow as the sun went down on our vacation. I covered the Arizona span from Tucson, and the hubbi drove the rest of the way. Hours and hours later we made it home, shortly before midnight. It would be Saturday and we had time to re-adjust to the real world. It has been a wonderful escapade.

1 comment:

  1. wow - that is a lot of driving... but what beautiful skies

    ReplyDelete

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