Happy Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving, one of my very favorite holidays. Thanksgiving is serious. My cousin and I take it very seriously. In our family we are all assigned a dish for holidays. My sister was assigned the green bean casserole. Last year she fell ill (we question that to this day) and was unable to make the green bean casserole. Not only that, no one else had planned for it, and that's not a dish that can be thrown together unless you are prone to keeping fried onions in your pantry.

Upon realizing that the green bean casserole was at risk, I rushed over to my cousins on the way to my Nanas. I hockey stopped in her driveway, and yelled out the window "there is no green bean casserole". She ran back into her house, and ran back out carrying a can of cream of mushroom soup. "It's not enough, we have no fried onions!" "THANKSGIVING IS RUINED, SHE RUINED THANKSGIVING!!" We were in full on panic. All the phones were ringing, calling around for fried onions. We knew that she had some, but we couldn't get my brother in law to offer them up, and no one wanted to flat out ask for them. My Nana searched her pantry and came up with a few cans of green beans. GREEN BEANS? PLAIN GREEN BEANS?!?!? NO THAT WILL NEVER DO! WE MUST HAVE FRIED ONIONS!!! In my memory of the day, it was mass hysteria, people throwing off their clothes as if they were burning their skin, we were writhing in pain. It was horrible. In reality, I was the only one that really had an issue with it.

Eventually we sent my sister who was 18 at the time to the store to get some of those precious fried onions. The family was on dessert when she returned, she was 18 and no doubt had to go pick up a couple of her homies to go with her. I wasn't about to start until we had the green bean casserole. Thanksgiving dinner is VERY important.

This year, I will have soup while everyone else partakes in my absolute favorite meal of the year. At first I didn't want to go, I would just stay here and read and let this be another day. But then I realized that although it is my favorite dinner, there are other reasons I love to go to my Nanas on Thanksgiving.

After dinner, we all sit around full and miserable, with a plate of desert on our swollen bellies. We laugh about the fact that there is one bathroom for all 30 of us, and at some point in the day things are going to get ugly. Then we look through the ads for Black Friday and discuss how we should get up and go shopping. The kids run around and play in the leaves and tear things up. We play musical chairs for a comfortable place that isn't in front of a mirror, and we laugh. We laugh about Thanksgivings past and miss those who are no longer with us. We realize, although only to ourselves, that we are so truly lucky and blessed to have this crazy group of people to spend our holidays with. We thank God for each and every one of them, even though no less than 12 times this past year we cursed their existence for one reason or another.

So I'm going even though I can't eat. I'm going for what happens afterwards. I'm going because these people who annoy the sneezer out of me all year long, crack me up more often than not.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!