Thanksgiving abroad!

Thanksgiving this year was spent in Swindon with Stuart and his brother (Paul), sister-in-law (Kate) and niece (Olivia). Oh yes...and Rafer the famous chocolate lab. :-)

Stuart and I took off work on Thursday and Friday of that week (since people in the UK obviously treated it as any other day of the week). I headed down on Wednesday night to try and help Kate with things (since she's expecting!), and Stuart headed down on Thursday morning. It was really good fun getting into the holiday spirit and also teaching everyone what it's all about in the first place. Just like at Gobblerfest, I found myself answering questions about Thanksgiving related things that I'd never been asked before. I decided to come armed with the official Thankgiving story printed off Wikipedia to reference in a pinch - HA!

Paul and Kate went *above and beyond* the call of duty though and made it as close to a real Thanksgiving at home for me as they could. It was really touching b/c it was the first time I'd been away from my family and home for the actual day - and Thanksgiving is a much bigger deal to me than Christmas. Kate went to great lengths to find TWO big turkeys (Fred Senior and Fred Junior) and got ham (Wilbur) and ALL the trimmings. We even decided last minute to experiment and try and make homemade cranberry sauce even though we really had no clue what we were doing and I don't even LIKE cranberry sauce! HA! Neither of us ended up caring for it much, but one of the people at dinner that night commented that he really liked it! Go figure...

Anyway, Paul and Kate invited several of the guys on the same Army course as Paul and their wives over for dinner that night. Everyone got really into it all, and the Irish couple that was there brought some really good sweet potatoes and even brought marshmallows along at my request. :-)

As an extra added surprise, Paul and Kate ordered a huge Texan flag off the Internet that we hung from the front porch before everyone arrived. They also went to the effort of downloading a bunch of Texas/country themed songs from iTunes to create a music playlist for us to listen to all night. The Aggie War Hymn was even on there - I was VERY impressed! Other songs included some of the Dixie Chicks, the Yellow Rose of Texas, Road to Amarillo, and also some Johnny Cash. It was hilarious!

Dinner was fantastic and everyone had a really great time - Thanksgiving was a total success! :-)