Thank You Isn't Enough

photo by Erica Johnson

Every year I invite a bunch of people to celebrate Thanksgiving with us.  Year after year some people choose to make our home their holiday tradition and others are "just passing through."  When I was young my mom was the party thrower.  She had every holiday at our home and it was always Martha Stewart style.  My style is WAY more casual and very comfortable, but I still enjoy having a large group of people.  I like the varied conversation and the children playing and the wandering around the property/petting zoo.

photo by Erica Johnson

I woke up fairly early and decided to ignore my alarm and sleep for five more minutes.  Twenty minutes later I roll out of bed to begin preparations for the turkeys to begin roasting and the house to be properly put together.    The turkeys roast for two hours before I turn them over.  Ooops, one of the roasters is NOT plugged in and also, NOT hot.  I quickly raise the temperature to make up for two hours of cooking.  I always like us to eat promptly at noon.  Today we ate promptly at 1pm.

Everything got hot, cooked and placed out on the counter and I managed NOT to take a photo.  It was delicious.  We all ate and then my brother and his family showed up.  We ate again!  My brother began to use foul language and talk politics.  Both of those things are not allowed in my house and so instead of trying to tape his mouth shut, I excused myself from the table to give tours.  From what I hear, I missed some heated debates worthy of television commentary.

photo by Erica Johnson

All of the talk made me miss my goats.  I decided to take my sister-in-law and her nephew to the neighbor's house to fetch my goats.  We crossed through the fence with no goats in sight.  We walked and walked and walked and walked, you get the picture, until we finally found the goats.  They followed us back up to the fence, which was a very long walk away.  My sister-in-law was wearing cute leopard flats and her nephew some nice loafers.  The shoes were not conducive to the rocky terrain, but they did not complain and kept walking.  We cross the goats to our property and they begin to chase me toward the house.  Everyone is happy to see the goats and the goats were happy to see everyone.

photo by Erica Johnson

Our attention quickly shifted to the pony.  Charles the fat pony.  We lunged, we rode, we lunged, we rode, we lunged.  I think the mean age of riders who rode Charlie was 32.  Charlie was placed on a diet and I have been instructed to exercise him daily, but twice daily would be better.  Sounds like lots of work.  I guess having a pony is lots of work after all.  Dear Parents, Don't buy your child a pony for Christmas unless you have hired help.  Although Brett thinks he should be paid for everything he does, this is not the kind of help I'm suggesting.  I'm thinking something along the lines of, say, the Marlboro man.

Please note, I do not condone smoking, but I do condone hiring the Marlboro man to be your ranch hand.  I could leave him a list of things to do:
                        Clean the chicken coop
                        Exercise the pony
                        Tend the garden
                        Cut down all of the trees suffering from oak wilt
                        Build Chloe her dream playhouse
                        Quit smoking

Not sure he would like my list very much.  Especially the last thing.  From the photos he really looks to be enjoying that cigarette.  Smoking is bad.  Quit smoking.

After all the dreaming of having a farmer helper, my Brazilian friend and horse trainer extraordinaire followed me over to the chicken coop to mingle with the chickens.  She is full of animal information and showed me the easy way to determine sex of a chicken.  I have always done it the city way....wait to see who crows.  Her husband actually took a video of us determining the gender of the new chicks.  I will let you know if it goes viral.  I am happy to report that BABY CHICK is a girl!!!!!!  Of the seven chickens, two are female and five are male.  Dang it!  Thadd says I have to slaughter the males for our freezer.  This particular story will be another blog post when it comes time to decide who lives and who dies.

After all the chicken excitement I came inside to find my kitchen practically spotless thanks to my sister-in-law and mom.  I did a few things and then Thadd summoned us outside to make s'mores with the children.  I walked up to find not one, not two, not three....but FIVE fires.  Even the dogs joined us.  It was a good time and I managed to avoid getting covered in marshmallow.  Brett, on the other hand, managed to have more marshmallow on his person than in his belly.

We decided to call it a day and get everyone to bed early-ish. I sat down to write after loading the washing machine and folding the clothing in the dryer.  I heard a strange sound coming from Chloe's room.  I strained to hear if her dog was barking or to figure out what I had just heard.  I hear it again.  I  turn the hall light on and open her bedroom door.  She has her head over the edge of her bed and I walk in just in time to hear the noise again.  I'm sure I don't even have to tell you what was all over the floor.  GROSSSSS!  I pull it together and grab her out of bed and walk her to the toilet and put her hair in a ponytail holder to get it out of her face.  I start to clean up.  She thanks me for cleaning up and apologizes for being sick.  She quickly follows the apology with a story about how she stuck "the whole KitKat" in her mouth today.  I ask her to please spare  me the details of her eating as I was experiencing them first hand and I didn't need a reminder.  She gets back in bed with a trashcan at her bed side.  I hope I won't be hearing that wretched sound again tonight.

Despite all the work that goes in to Thanksgiving, I am thankful for so many things.  So thankful, in fact, I don't think "Thank You" is enough.  A husband, a family, a home, a car, a job, food, and far more luxuries than I can list here.  Don't let today be the only day you express your thanks.  Try and do it daily.  Thank your teachers, thank your boss, thank the service men and woman, thank someone.  Some people are doing the 30 days of thankful on Facebook.  What if we try doing 365 day of THANKFUL?  I will start....I am thankful for each one of you.  Goodnight Friends and Happy Thanksgiving.

Brett says, "Take my picture and put a speech bubble
on it that says, 'OUCH, my butt is on fire!'"