Thanksgiving with the 'rents

Ah, Turkey Day, filled with everything I love. Snuggling on the couch with the kids watching the Macy's Parade, cooking yummy desserts and side dishes, eating the 548,989 carbs that are in the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (love being pregnant at the holidays) and of course family!

This year we went to my parents house, Thanksgiving with the Hochstetlers. My parents, all the siblings, husbands of said siblings and 4.25 kids (2.25 being mine). As usual, my mom prepared a fantastic spread and we all ate way too much (too much so that we had to eat dessert the next day!) After dinner, however, the real fun began...

My dad, who always manages to surprise us with some sort of wacky (and hilarious) family game (with cash prizes no less!!!) had the night planned for us.

First we had to figure out the punchline to Thanksgiving jokes (If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?) Then it was a word search (I did mine the fastest, even though I was competing against a firefighter and and refinery worker that have nothing but time some nights and do them on a regular basis) Next we did the classic game that we all did in grade school the day before a holiday, "How many words can you get from Happy Thanksgiving".
This is where things got interesting...We had 5 minutes to complete this, most of us were filling up about 1/4 of the page, but my brother-in-law was well onto needing another sheet. We were amazed and couldn't believe how many words he was getting and how fast! Midway through, my sister blurts out to him, "Where did you get the word 'window'?" He says, "It's a word..." Naturally we all bust out laughing as we notice he has words like 'glass' and 'soccer' too. He wonders aloud, "Did I miss an element of this game? Weren't we supposed to come up with words?" Through our laughing we managed to let him know he missed a very important element, which was sticking to the letters in Happy Thanksgiving. We felt bad, he was home-schooled and never got to partake in the rite of passage as A student whose teachers had run out of classwork and needed to fill the time as she counted down to a holiday break from her students!

After we calmed ourselves from that, dad had us answer some Thanksgiving trivia - I love trivia so I thought I would be good at this part (not so much...) The best answer of the night came from my sister: Q - What is the top speed a scared turkey can run? A - (her thought) 71 mph. I think we nearly peed ourselves when she said this aloud and my brother did a great impression of a turkey passing her minivan on the highway since it can reach such said speed. I don't think I even remember the right answer, but I think it's near 20 mph. I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard and my eyes were filled with happy tears as I sat around and watched the family truly enjoy each other.

We played another game the involved throwing playing cards and think a few people came close to losing an eye, but in the end, with all the crazy scoring dad came up with 30 points for this, double the amount of how many people are playing for this, minus 87 for that, and E=mc2 for that, we finally had our winners. The Hochstetler siblings all came in the bottom 4 (Nothing the Easy Way - right?) and our husbands took the top 3 spots (yay! we married good!!)

We all got envelopes with different cash amounts (Thanks dad!!) and Lotto tickets - to which we scratched off like fiends, ignored the kid's requests for juice, suffered through cramped fingers from holding the pennies - all to win about $10.00

All in all, it was one of the best Thanksgivings I have had as an adult thanks in large part to my dad, who never gets enough credit. THANKS DAD!!