Thanksgiving Road trip - better late than never.

In November we had a road trip to Nebraska to visit our nephew Coleman, his wife and their two little girls. We are traveled with Greg's Mom. As she is not able to climb stairs, Greg and his brother devised a plan to get her up into our coach so that we could bring her with us while she was visiting us in the Great State of Texas. Come to think of it she spent more days out of Texas, than in during this trip.

The first day we traveled to Sequoyah State Park near Wagoner, Oklahoma. The next day Greg was able to take his Mom into Broken Arrow to visit with her older sister, Kay. They hadn't seen one another in 18 years. The kids and I stayed at the campground and walked down to the lake twice. The kids enjoyed playing along the shoreline, picking up rocks, finding freshwater clams, watching geese fly in over the lake, pretending that the sailboat off in the distance was the one from "Tommy Boy" . . .

On Sunday, we traveled to Bellevue, Nebraska. After getting Mom settled and gathering up Sister Sue who was here to meet her newest granddaughter (born on Friday). We took Sister Sue out to the campground with us for the night, as Mom took the room she had been in. The house was full. Pamela, her boys and her folks were all there.

Monday brought a trip to the airport for Greg and 5 loads of laundry for me. We gathered with everyone for dinner and then headed back to the campground 40 minutes away. About midnight the furnace in the coach began making strange noises. We ended up having to turn the heater off and use the ceramic heater to heat the coach. We set an alarm to be sure that it wasn't getting too cold. When we woke up on Tuesday morning it was 40 degrees inside the coach. Brrrrrrrrr. We bought a better heater at Walmart and got the coach heater working properly again. I am thankful for heaters, especially while winter camping.

We were able to spend some time with Coleman and Mina bowling on Tuesday. What fun to watch a 2 year old bowl! Bowling on base is sure fun and inexpensive. Plus the beer was tasty!

Greg gathered his bother from the airport in the evening after a nacho feast. When we got back to the coach it was nice and warm.

Wednesday was a lazy day to begin with, then morphed into errands in order to prep the brine for two turkeys. We found an electric deep fryer in our travels, which we decided to try.
The brine turned out well. . . Smelled amazing. Tasted salty. . . :)
Dinner out with 8 people somehow did not go as smoothly as it did previously. Greg ended up getting KFC on the way home from a wing place. Go figure.

Thanksgiving Day began with a hustle bustle of getting the coach road ready and over to Coleman's to get the bird into the deep fryer. Success! Fantastic bird. We have grazed all day. Watched movies, played games( if so inclined ), more games, more fudge ,more rolled salami with cream cheese and peppercini. Yum.

After feasting and playing we loaded Mom up and headed to the nearest Walmart - as we do on some trips - to sleep before heading out early in the morning. We did this not thinking at all about "Black Friday." When we got to Walmart we noticed that the parking lot was nearly full. Hmmmm. What? Oh, Black Friday. It was about 11:30 p.m. and the sales began at Midnight. Being the adventurous folks that we are, we put the kids to bed, told Mom she was in charge of them and headed in.

What an experience we had. We thoroughly enjoyed watching the people with heaping full carts navigate through crowds of other heaping full carts. At the beginning we didn't have a cart and found ourselves going places those with carts could not.. Fun! We were amazed a the sheer volume of stuff - and people - and stuff. We found some good deals on Christmas gifts for the kids -and realized we were going to need a cart. I found an abandoned one in the pet section :). We found the sheriff's gun set that Calvin really really wanted for Christmas.  . . We waited in line a long time. The lady in front of us was trying to pull one over on the checker - it didn't work. We checked out and took our purchases out to the coach and tried to get some sleep before hitting the road.

Friday morning we left early for Oklahoma - as we had a dinner invitation to Greg's cousin's home with Aunt Kay. We arrived in the late afternoon, enjoyed dinner, conversation and a great domino game called Spinners. Saturday morning we left early and made it home to Austin in the afternoon. By Sunday afteroon we owned our own copy of Spinners. If you are ever in our neck of the woods - let's play!